


In the Balance

by LeonaHightower



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeonaHightower/pseuds/LeonaHightower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who was Ned and Lyanna Stark's mother? (I started writing this fic before Lyarra Stark filled the gap.)<br/>Like many other ficwriters, I was in the grip of the questions, what passed between Elia and Rhaegar in the days and months following the Tourney of Harrenhal? After all, that's pretty intriguing, what Elia had to say about that blue rose chaplet. And how can one explain the wild story of Lyanna's kidnapping/elopement, given the obvious decency and rationality of all three characters involved?<br/>And the biggest question: what would it take to prevent Robert's Rebellion?</p><p>Disclaimer: I own nothing in GRRM's world, and regret his disapproval of ficwriting - started this fic before I learned about the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lyanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alya Thawer](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Alya+Thawer).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna is discovered by Rhaegar hiding at the brink of Gods Eye lake after she has performed as the Knight of the Laughing Tree.  
> Their conversation later in the day revolves around Lyanna's mother, hothouse farming, and gas lamps.

The Gods Eye lake was lapping at the coarse sand of the shore with short little waves. The water was calm and grey under the same dim sky that had conferred an austere, solemn air on the events of this past afternoon. She had entered the lists incognito, to redress an insult that was done by three stupid squires to a lad she met yesterday – incidentally, right in the middle of his being insulted. Lyanna splashed some cold lake water on her flushed face and sat down to try and make some sense of what had just happened, well screened by a growth of bushy willows up the sloping shore, the events of the past two days pressing thick on her memory.

Yesterday at this time of day she was scouting the near vicinity of the tourney grounds where they had just arrived that morning, while her brothers were still busy putting up their silk tent and overseeing the unloading of their party's luggage (Ned was keeping an eye on the glass-topped wooden boxes with the plants). Lyanna took the opportunity to sneak away, just for half an hour she thought, before they would need her help with the clothes. Their best clothes needed unpacking, airing, sorting, checking if anything needed to be cleaned or mended. The festive garments hadn't been worn for over a year now, as her lord father wasn't in any hurry to celebrate anything even after the eleven moons of mourning had been over. The tourney at Harrenhal, though, was called at shorth notice with the arrival of spring, and they had no time to sort out their clothes at home.

No sooner had she left behind the last row of the newly raised tents than she spied a group of three young lads at a distance, viciously kicking something on the ground. Lyanna hurried there, still holding a tourney sword in her hand, which she had grabbed as they were unpacking and forgotten to put down. What they were doing didn't look good, and as she approached she realized it was someone and not something that they were kicking. By a forked frog spear thrown on the ground a few feet away and by the victim's swamp-green dress, already much bloodied, she recognized him to be a crannogman.

"That's my father's man you're kicking!!!" she yelled, charging at them with her tourney sword as soon as they looked up at her. She took them completely by surprise, so they scattered at once, trying, too late, to hide their faces with their sleeves. She was gifted with a lightning-flash, instant memory for faces. The face of the young man on the ground was not familiar to her, though. His nose was bleeding, maybe broken, and there was a gash in his left cheek. She promptly knelt beside him, asking if he was much hurt and whether he could sit up.

About an hour later the crannogman Howland Reed was reclining on a camp berth in their large tent, dressed in a clean set of Ben’s clothes, which fit him a little loosely. His wounds were washed out and treated with the purest sunflower oil simmered pink with tutsan, an unsurpassed remedy for superficial wounds and burns, according to Old Nan. Howland was Lord Reed’s eldest son and had spent all of last winter on the Isle of Faces here in the Gods Eye Lake, learning their lore from the last children of the forest, who still survived there, although they were never seen anywhere else. He didn't tell this right away, while Brandon was talking to him. Lyanna cringed with embarrassment, remembering how clearly his polished, confident manner was out of place with the little crannogman, making him shrink into himself, as if he felt even more beaten than before. Brandon suggested they could arm him for the tourney tomorrow, so he would have ample chance to right his wrongs. Reed was visibly disconcerted and started muttering something about the isolated way they lived at Greywater Keep, never attending any tourneys and not even keeping any jousting spears at the armory. Only after Ned entered and sat down close to him, while Brandon excused himself and hurried out, did young Reed begin to show some signs of reviving. Lyanna was even able to persuade him to come to the feast Lord Whent was holding that night – with the extra profit of having Ben rummage through his trunk himself, hissing curses and shaking out clothes moths, till he found for Howland a nice dull-green tunic decorated with silver thread and a pair of decently fitting hosen, which only needed a bit of folding and stitching at the ankles.

Later on, after dark, Lyanna slipped out to spy around, and eventually spotted the faces of all three of Howland Reed's abusers. It was easy to browse through firelit, unsuspecting faces around bright campfires, as she hovered unnoticed in the dark. They turned out to be squires of a Frey, a Haigh and a Blount.

Her reverie was broken by a rustle in the willow bushes up the bank. She quickly looked around to see if any pieces of the armor were in sight. They were borrowed by Ned piecemeal from their camp neighbors on the pretext of having broken this detail and lost that, the night before. Nothing was visible, she had been careful enough to hide it all in a little hole in the sand under a sprawling bush, which she marked with a bit of white ribbon torn off her handkerchief, tied discreetly to one of the lowest branches. She and Ned should have no trouble finding the place when the moon rose and then returning the spare gauntlets, dinted plate and nondescript helmet to their owners. Someone was noisily approaching, crashing through the growth down the lake's sloping bank.

"Who is there?" – she shouted.

"My lady, please excuse my intrusion. I wanted to make sure you were well." The voice belonged to a person so unlikely to have appeared there that Lyanna was at a loss to identify it for a few moments. 

It was the same voice that sang "Summerhall Sunsets" last night, the song that made her cry. It had a note of some rare, mellow, warm metal in it, not known to smiths, more enticing even than the pure silver cords of the harp that Prince Rhaegar played so well.

She had a few moments to get over her astonishment before he appeared in the clearing.

"Your Grace, there is no cause to be alarmed for me. I only wanted to enjoy the calm of the waters," she gestured awkwardly at the majestic grey expanse of Gods Eye. His arrival, dreamlike and unexpected as it was, didn't bode well. She was wondering how she could make her hiding out here appear natural enough, in her sweat-soaked padded doublet and breeches smelling of horse, dishevelled and still flushed from the jousting in spite of the cold water she had splashed in her face. Why on earth would the prince, of all people, go out to search for her, and more disturbingly still, how did he know where to look?

"Oh, then I will not disturb you for long, lady Lyanna. My royal father sent me out with a discreet search party to look for the mystery knight, who disappeared so suddenly after his victory. His Grace would like to reward the man from his own bounty, once he discloses himself."

"His Grace is very insistent," Lyanna couldn't help blurting out.

"Yes, I would say that's just the word, my lady… Have you perchance glimpsed anyone resembling our winner in armor and stature, hurrying out of sight, as you made your way here? You must have left the tourney grounds about the same time as he, seeing as I left soon after and found you already here?"

"No, Your Grace, I haven't seen anyone who might be him. I am sorry I can't be of use to you in this – I left the audience earlier, right after the mystery knight's victory was evident. I was a little indisposed. Perhaps a slight fever."– She gestured at her face and hair. - "I thought the calm and cool of the lakeside might do me good."

"Then I will no longer disturb your rest, my lady. If you chance to see the owner of this, tell him the king is eager to see his face and give him proper reward, whoever he may be." – As he spoke, Prince Rhaegar slipped down the shield that hung behind his shoulder, out of her sight, and showed it to Lyanna. Seven hells. She had hung her shield on the broken bough of a young ashtree as she entered the lakeside growth, to remove her helmet, which suddenly started feeling very tight and oppresive about her head. Turns out she never took the damned shield off that bough. The laughing weirwood she painted on it last night was now laughing at her.

Prince Rhaegar bowed to her and retired, crashing through the tangle of branches. Well, it's not he who is the clumsy, awkward bumbling fool around here. 

There was nothing left for her to do other than stay on the lakeshore for as long as it took for things to calm down in the camp – whatever it might be that ensued from Rhaegar's visit. No one else came to trouble her. She moved a few hundred yards east along the shore, further away from the camp, where the growth was taller and one could find a really snug and hopefully well-hidden cove under the low-growing branches of a redwood. After a while she fell asleep on the sand, having pulled her grey woolen cape over her head.

She woke at deep dusk, and hurried back to the Starks' main tent. On her way she stopped to listen by a campfire of the Darry men: one of them, sitting on a flat slab of wood and burnishing a helmet placed on the ground between his knees, was saying:

"So King Aerys is pissed off that this Knight of the Laughing Tree has escaped like that. No friend of the king, he says. Only the shield was found. I say, good for him he made off clean. The king is as quick to flare up of late as spilled lamp oil."

 

 ***

Ned leaped off his camp bed as soon as he heard the rustle of the tent flap, although she was intent on entering quietly. He rushed to embrace her, then took her by the shoulders and beamed at her face.

"This was good jousting, sister! 'I require no other reward, only that you teach your squires honor!'" – it came out funny, as he tried to reproduce her shout in a half-whisper. – "You should have heard your booming voice! We need to note the way that helmet's visor is made, before we give it back – I would love to sound like that too, when I speak to my enemies from inside my own helmet!"

"Ned, I have been found out."

"What do you mean, Lya? The Knight of the Laughing Tree has vanished into thin air, except for his shield, which Prince Rhaegar found by the lake. Great move, that was, too. The talk is that the mystery knight might have been a wizard from the Isle of Faces, who could breathe water and just walked back home under the lake."

"Prince Rhaegar found me, as well as the shield. He seemed to have known I went down to the shore to hide, and cut through the brambles right to where I was. Hell, my brains must have leaked out, I swear! How could I hide everything else and just leave that bloody shield behind!"

"Lya, please, calm down first. Do you want more people to hear you?" – he jestured towards the tent walls. –  "The prince clearly made no connection, we would have known by now if he did."

"Damn it, he said nothing, but I'm sure he added two and two together and figured out my sweaty doublet and red face had to do with that shield I left hanging on the goddamn ashtree, just twenty yards above where I thought I was hiding."

"He said nothing, that's right. That may be all that matters."

She considered it a moment, than grinned and hugged him, giving him a slap on the back.

"You know, brother, you may be right after all. I'll wait for a better reason before I get _really_ worried about this."

"Vayon, will it please you get us some ale and something to eat for Lyanna?" – Ned called outside the tent. – "You must be starving. I hope the mutton stew is still hot enough from the embers."

The mutton stew with barley and mushrooms was just the thing, even if it was less than hot – everyone else had had their supper long before she came back. Once she finished eating, they stole back to the shore in the light of waxing moon and brought back her borrowed armor – they could return it piece by piece before the end of the tourney. After that Ned started preparing for the night, with the other two brothers and Howland Reed, whom they invited to stay with them in the main tent for the entire tourney. The young men were all tired out after this long day. But Lyanna was still excited and wakeful, so she asked Brandon's permission to go to the fair grounds for a while.

 

***

Even at this late hour, the open glade at the center of the tent camp teemed with folk, rang with music, puppet shows and mummery, and dozens of stalls offered beer and mulled wine, honey cookies and every kind of pies, sausages of uncertain composition, wrinkled late winter apples and other fare for the festive crowd. Armor and trinket traders and sellers of camp necessities such as firewood, lamp oil and sleeping mats had mostly finished for today.

She came up to a stall selling mulled wine, under a tall birch whose trunk and expanding lower branches were decorated with little lights. Having ordered a cup, she heard the cloaked and hooded man who approached in the meantime, order:

And one for me too," in the same familiar voice she heard earlier today.

She looked up at him quickly, his face well shaded by the low-drawn hood of a dark cape, and resisted the impulse to greet him by his title and name.

The stall owner had the expediency to have placed three or four trestle tables behind his stall, deeper into the shade, further away from the crowded cenral glade. Probably to prevent his glazed earthenware cups from wandering off in all directions, Lyanna thought. Without saying a word, they both headed that way. For chairs, there were a few round firewood billets. Lyanna brought two delightful puffy fried flatbreads for them before settling down across the table from the prince.

"My royal father was passing pleased with your House's gift of winter plants, lady Lyanna," Rhaegar began tentatively. - "I, for my part, liked the roses most. Such noble colors: pale blue, snow white, icy pink."

"I am very glad to hear this, Your Grace."

"If they could grow all the way up north in the winter, surely they will thrive in King's Landing."

"Have you been given instructions for your gardener on their care?"

"Yes, your brother Ser Brandon enclosed a rather ponderous parchment from your Maester. Are there any spells in there, or recipes of magic potions to make the plants grow in the middle of winter?"

She was uncertain if he was joking or not. Still she chuckled.

"No, Prince Rhaegar, I suppose the greater part of the parchment is about making the lamps and drawing swamp spirits to light them."

"Swamp spirits??"

"It is all my lady mother's invention. When my parents traveled north from Oldtown after their wedding, she was astonished at the wandering lights they saw in the swamps of the Neck. They shone whiter and brighter than any candle, oil or wood fire. Within half a year she returned to the swamps and stayed there in some roadside inn with her party, until she devised a way to capture the airlike swamp spirits where they rise from the deep of the bog, and bring them home squeezed into oxhide bags, sealed with pitch all over. Now don't ask me about the lamps, it's complicated as hell, we had to build another smithy to make them. But it's the lamp light that allows the plants to grow in winter in our greenhouse. Before there were lamps, there was enough warmth but not enough light for the roses to bloom and for strawberries to ripen in the dark season. The heat comes, or course, from the hot water that courses through the greenhouse walls, same way as the older parts of the castle are heated. I suppose in the Red Keep you will need to take care of that too."

Prince Rhaegar was listening raptly, but she paused.

"Gods be good, I have never heard any of this about the late Lady Leona. And I am truly sorry for your loss – now I have a chance to give you my condolences in person."

Thank you, Your Grace," - Lyanna sighed. She should have been concerned about spilling the secret her parents kept all these years, but instead of embarrassed she felt fiercely proud of her mother. – "No wonder you did not hear about this, my family decided it was safer to keep these occupations of my lady mother in secret, to avoid annoying curiosity."

"On my honor as a prince, your family's secrets are safe with me – as well as your own, lady Lyanna." – His eyes burned her for a moment, bringing up a blush into her cheeks – but not a blush of shame, it was a surge of a different, uplifting mix of feelings. – "But how did lady Leona come by this incredible skill with fire and metal?"

"And glass and minerals too! I shouldn't be telling you, but since I've started, I am willing to carry on. My lady mother was a Hightower of Oldtown, from one of the lesser branches of House Hightower. When she was twelve, she ran away from home, disguised as a boy. From a child she loved spending time at workshops and smithies, she told me, looking at how materials were transformed and how things were made to work. When she approached nearer to womanhood, her parents began to object to her walking about in stained and smoked dresses and to her lack of interest in more proper occupations for a noble family's daughter. So that's why she eventually ran away and came to the Citadel as an orphan boy. After they questioned her and saw that her mind was tenacious and lively and her hands able and deft, they accepted her as a novice."

"Her parents had been combing all of Seven Kingdoms for nearly three years, thinking she was kidnapped and most probably died a terrible death, since the kidnapper never asked for a ransom. She, for her part, attempted to leave the Citadel as little as possible, and that was not difficult: they apprenticed her to their smith, who was himself a maester. She couldn't dream of a position more fortunate. Luckily too, she was a girl of spare build, and grew more lean and muscular from her work, so it wasn't too hard for her to pass herself for a boy wearing baggy enough clothes, which the maesters didn't mind. (She did once have to deal with an older acolyte who tried to molest her, thinking she was a boy, but she promised him to tell the archmaester about all his advances and threats, so he thought it better to leave her alone). The only thing that worried her was her voice, which didn't break as boys' voices do. But before they ever started suspecting anything, the maester smith began sending her on errands to the port, to fetch the rare ores and minerals from the ships that often brought such things to Oldtown, for the captains knew that the Citadel was a sure customer for such things. One of these days her younger brother Gerold spotted an acolyte in the street, whose eyes were disturbingly like this sister's, even though his face was rough and dark. Gerold was only five years old when Leona disappeared, so he wasn't certain. Still Ser Hugo Hightower set a spying post in a tavern in the street that led to the port, and eventually she was spotted and approached by Ser Hugo's squire. My mother told me that she was always grateful to her father that he did keep the terms she set for returning home. She demanded her dowry to be given to her in coin, to set up a foundry for rare metals in the metalworkers' street. And not to be hindered in anything that pertained to running that foundry. Her parents were grieved and shocked by these demands, but too glad she was found alive to put up much resistance. They agreed, only on the condition that she wear a mask and a false name in the foundry, and proper dress and gloves at home -- especially when they had visitors."

Lyanna smiled and fell silent.

"This is one of the most extraordinary stories I have ever heard – or read about. But do I understand it right that your mother intended never to get married?"

"You are right, Your Grace, that was her intention. She believed she wasn't made for a lady's life – nor did she receive the training customary for young ladies."

"How did she end up then as the lady of one of the seven great Houses – if you forgive my question? For even if she _were_ educated as a lady, her father's house in Oldtown would not be the first place where a heir to Winterfell and the North would look for a bride – forgive me a thousand times again."

Lyanna couldn't help letting out a little laugh,

"True, he didn't come to my grandfather Hightower's house to look for a bride. He came to the metalworkers' quarter, to look for some good Valyrian steel."

"I see then. Like the great lord he was, he carried away what was the rarest and most precious to be found there."

Lyanna looked down. The prince's final remark felt to her pleasant and disturbing at once.

 

 ***

That evening they talked on and on about her and his family, before Rhaegar excused himself and returned to the castle of Harrenhal, where Lord Whent had no trouble housing even a bigger party than King Aerys's.

The next day she sat with her brothers, attired like a proper lady, watching Prince Rhaegar ride in the lists and win the tourney. When he rode up to where the Starks sat and crowned her with the wreath made of their own roses, she shuddered at the feeling of something ominous taking place – he should have ridden to the royal platform where Princess Elia was sitting, have placed the crown on _her_ head. What was happening felt like ice cracking in spring on the river. Festive, loud, dangerous, unpredictable. But only for a fleeting moment.

In the evening, the Starks were invited to sup with the royal family. Lyanna would have given almost anything to avoid showing up in that hall and sitting down at table with Princess Elia. However, Brandon was adamant and told her that the excuse of being indisposed would sound ridiculous, or worse, suspicious, as the royal family had seen her hale and hearty just a few hours ago. Ned whispered in her ear that it would make things worse with the Princess if she declined to come. So, with Benjen's help (she wouldn't abide a stupid gossiping maid), she brushed out and plaited her slate-dark hair and donned her dress of dull azure silk with black trimmings, to match the honor of the royal invitation. Then she draped a silver grey mantle over her shoulders, to avoid looking ostentatious. Her conflicted motives might be laughable if she voiced them – but the brightly polished waist-length mirror, forged by her mother of some lightweight alloy specially for traveling, asserted she looked quite impressive nonetheless.

It was an almost private event, compared to the tremendous feast of two nights before. Queen Rhaella with Prince Viserys didn't come to Harrenhal; Rhaegar and Elia's little daughter remained at King's Landing too, with her nurses and her grandmother, who was exceedingly fond of her – thus Elia answered to Brandon's polite enquiries. The king retired early, accompanied by the Hand, Lord Tywin Lannister, who looked all bitterness and poison despite his iron-reined reserve. Both of his twin children were absent – Lyanna learned that Jaime, newly raised to Kingsguard, was sent off to King's Landing right away, which prevented him from taking part in the tourney, and his sister never showed up this evening, without anyone even knowing the pretext. Brandon, after having shared that bit of information about Jaime, talked mostly to Lady Ashara Dayne, Princess Elia's companion. (If Jaime did take part in the tourney, Lyanna thought, perhaps Rhaegar would not be the winner. Anyway, it all turned out as it did.) Ben took Howland Reed to show him around the legendary castle, as Howland had never seen it except from the outside. So she ended up in a close circle over spicy white dessert wine, cheeses and dried exotic fruit, with Rhaegar and Princess Elia, while Ned hovered on the periphery of the conversation, listening intently but saying little. They were talking, naturally, about today's tourney. Rhaegar was rather quick to sense the great awkwardness on Lyanna's part toward Elia, because of the crown of roses. Indeed, it didn't take a brilliant mind like his to figure out she _would_ be uncomfortable. He began tentatively:

"Lady Lyanna, Her Grace is glad that Winterfell roses were bestowed where they belonged by right. Truly, they should crown the heiress of the extraordinary lady Leona, whose presence made winter flowers bloom in the North."

Elia nodded in assent.

"This is so kind of Your Grace, I am most thankful," was all that Lyanna managed to return. Her mind was busy puzzling out what stood behind this approval, and how much Rhaegar had to tell his wife of the Stark parents' story in order to obtain it. Ned picked up the thread that Lyanna seemed to be losing:

"As Brandon told His Grace King Aerys, our lord father sends his apologies to the royal House for not coming to the tourney. He is still grieving sorely for our dear mother, even though the year of mourning is already over."

"This is so very touching," - said Elia. – "I would not imagine such a tender heart in a stern-looking man like Lord Rickard." – Her lively, penetrating dark eyes looked genuinely saddened. – "Although all I ever saw of him was a distant glimpse at the celebration when Rhaenis was born – so I shouldn't be too quick to jump to conclusions."

"He could be stern with anyone but Mother," – Lyanna broke in. – "You know, he would sometimes call her 'our Lightbringer,' when he thought no one could hear."

 Elia smiled, Ned frowned, and Rhaegar looked up in shocked surprise that he didn't quite manage to conceal. 

 

***

 


	2. Rhaegar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He would have gladly cut out that part of the story altogether, but the story didn't admit of it."

**Rhaegar**

 

He lifted the cup hastily to his lips and took a long draught of wine, to conceal his agitation at this nickname that Lyanna's mother turned out to have borne. Gods be good, it sealed his presentiments about this radiant young girl with the awe-inspiring seal of truth that burned him right through; it rhymed with the prophecy. Like a comet, she broke into his skies a mere day ago, and like a comet she boded awful and wonderful things to come. A warrior maid from the north, from the line of the First Men, bearing the emblem of the Old Gods on her shield. Having first appeared to him as a mystery knight, she commanded him to make out her meaning as he already found out her true face and name.

Lyanna Stark moved with the same forceful and purposeful precision in her silk gown at the royal supper as she did in her armor on the tourney grounds or in a man's clothes at the lakeside. The music of her movements entranced him even now, especially when he imagined her practicing her swordsmanship, half in secret, with her brothers, concealed by the granite walls of Winterfell – which he never saw, but longed to see now. He couldn't drive this picture from his mind ever since she told him yesterday about her father's reluctant approval of her training under their master-at-arms.

Elia was saying in the meantime:

"Rhaegar told me that Lord Rickard was very liberal with your lady mother's patronage of the most gifted metalworkers of the realm. I find this truly commendable – especially since we will enjoy the fruits of their invention now at King's Landing. Provided that she has left any good craftsmen here to the south of the Neck." – Rhaegar saw Lyanna chuckled over the joke with everyone else, although he wondered whether she felt more relief or disappointment at the way he altered Lady Leona' story for Elia. He noticed all of a sudden that the four of them were alone, not counting the royal family's old butler Renfry, who would stay to properly wait on them no matter how late they sat. Lady Ashara Dayne and Lyanna's brother Ser Brandon, the last other diners in the hall, had disappeared a while ago.

"They were the most loving couple I have ever seen," Lyanna returned, as if to vindicate what she had said about her parents in the sense that she actually meant it. –  "Their love for each other was what warmed us throughout our childhoods – it spilled over, I'm thinking now, like the light and warmth of a forge fire that brightens the whole smithy, even if it's meant only to soften the iron."

"You speak like a poet, Lady Lyanna," Rhaegar rejoined.

"If it please Your Grace, poet is indeed the last thing I am," she denied with a smile. Her quiet brother Eddard looked like he wanted to say something, perhaps to object to what she said before – Rhaegar wasn't sure to what: she might have said more than one thing that displeased him; yet he was apparently too shy to confront her in their presence. Perhaps Rhaegar wouldn't have paid even that much attention to the brother if he wasn't so curiously like and at the same time unlike his sister. He felt like teasing the man further:

"I suppose your lord father might not even suspect that it was in him, to shine with so much light, until he met Lady Leona."

Eddard's eyes went down to study the pattern on the tablecloth. He had the same lusterless dark hair and same firmly outlined lips as his sister, but he blushed differently – somehow she managed it better. Lyanna agreed:

"This may be true. She knew how to bring out the light in things that wouldn't shine on their own."

Rhaegar smiled at her and nodded knowingly, saying:

"Of course, 'We light the way'."

"But maybe it would please Your Grace to sing for us tonight?" – she ventured.

Somewhat to his surprise, Elia seconded the request.

He wasn't at all inclined to be coy with them, so he ordered the butler to bring his harp from his chamber. It didn't take him long to decide what song to choose. He began an ancient ballad about Azor Ahai, which he had just finished translating from the Valyrian tongue. In fact, he sat down to translate it when Elia told him that she was with child again, only about two moons ago. He didn't dare to say he hoped for a son this time, so the ballad served as a way to give vent to his hopes and aspirations. He had cut out the stanza that praised Azor Ahai's firmness in not sparing his beloved wife for the sake of tempering the Lightbringer – he knew it would hurt Elia's feelings to hear such words from him even in a song; he would have gladly cut out that part of the story altogether, but the story didn't admit of it. However, he had added two stanzas at the end, about the perilous river of time and prophecies that struggle to be fulfilled, and how they depend on people to take the right sort of action, for them to come true. Now these words took on a completely new meaning for him – somehow now it was clear that the right sort of action must have to do with Lady Lyanna.

When Rhaegar finished, there was a dreamy silence for a few long moments. Then Lyanna said:

"This is a marvelous song, Your Grace. Do you know, I heard this story first at the northern end of the Seven Kingdoms. Three years ago, when I was eleven, my father took me to visit the Wall. I didn't like Castle Black or its garrison one bit, but there was one man who made my stay more tolerable. For most of the fortnight we spent there, I sat a few hours every day with Castle Black's maester Aemon, an ancient man, frail and blind. He told me about the wonders of the East, and properties of herbs – he had volumes full of dried plant leaves and flowers delicately fixed to the pages, which he recognized by touch. But what I liked most was when he told about Old Valyria and the days of Aegon's conquest. Many of these stories I have known all my life, but he filled them with details that sounded impossible to invent. And some stories I heard from him for the first time, like the tale of Azor Ahai and the prophecy about the prince who shall be born amidst fire and salt to wield the Lightbringer again. I asked Maester Aemon how he came to know all this. He said he read very old books at the Citadel when he was still young and was only an acolyte forging his chain, and when his eyes could still see as well as anyone else's."

"My lady, would you like to know what house Maester Aemon comes from?" – Rhaegar interjected.

"Yes, of course – I asked him that, but he said they put away their house names when they take on the maester's chain." 

"Castle Black's maester is my great-uncle, Aemon Targaryen, the younger brother of my late grandfather Aegon the Fortunate."

Both of the Starks and Rhaegar's wife gave a gasp of astonishment. Elia said reproachfully:

"You didn't ever tell me."

"If it irks you, my dear, then I regret I didn't. But I don't recall we ever talked of Castle Black…"

"But of course you know this is _not_ about Castle Black!"

"Princess Elia, Your Grace," – Eddard suddenly interjected, - "it may be different with the great houses of Dorne, but you see… north of Highgarden it is considered… not exactly a disgrace, but not something to be proud of either, when a younger son finds no better calling for himself than taking a maester's chain. After all, a maester is sworn to lifelong _service_. This is not to the liking of many proud fathers, when a son of theirs takes an oath to serve."

Rhaegar wasn't sure what to make of this. Is this young man trying to justify the royal house – but places it as no different from any other Westerosi family? Or is he presuming to criticize Rhaegar's silence about great-uncle Aemon as stemming from arrogance? From Elia's smile at him, however, Rhaegar understood that perhaps the young Stark was trying to defuse the tension between the two of them. Yes, it looked as if the awkwardness of being a witness to their beginning quarrel prompted the man to make this awkward comment. Elia said:

"Unfortunately, this is also true to the south of Highgarden. Yet my brother Ser Doran would be an exception. He is the heir to Sunspear, and he devotes so much time to reading books about the works and days of past rulers, and to keeping court with our lord father, that you would bet he is preparing for rule as for some strenuous, demanding service."

"To call rule service - this is a truly remarkable thought!" – Eddard exclaimed. – "I think you have named what I have been struggling to put into words for a long time."

It was now Lyanna's turn to look at her brother with half amusement, half disapproval, as if he gave away some pet idea that they used to discuss privately.

"As for the prophecy of the prince who will be born to save men in the next long winter," – Eddard continued – "you can find it in the tale of the Long Night, if you listen carefully to the way Old Nan tells it."

"Surely if anyone can find it there, it's you, brother," -- Lyanna laughed – "never did Old Nan have such a devoted listener as you were when a little boy."

"Who is Old Nan?" – Elia asked.

"She is the Winterfell nanny," -- Lyanna answered promptly -- "and I'm telling you, she is twice as ancient as Prince Rhaegar's great-uncle, only her eyes are still quite sharp. She was my lord father's nanny before she was mine and Brandon and Ned's, and she was _his_   father's wet nurse before that. She used to tell us many hair-raising stories about the War for the Dawn, and the Others, and the children of the forest, and the First Men." 

Rhaegar listened to the brother and sister interrupting each other, recalling the story of eight thousand years ago as told by their old nanny – who knows what mysterious blood that old witch came from, if she truly was as old as they said…

The night wore on, and it was time to break up their party – more pleasant than Rhaegar remembered having in a long time.

 

 ***

When they finally walked up the stairs, Elia climbed in front of him and he felt the scent of her Lysean perfume, cool and teasing, with a bitter note. She held up her rustling skirts, and her delicately shaped calves shone in their silk stockings in the light of the torch that the butler carried high up behind them. At the door of her chamber he pointed inside with his eyes, silently asking her if he could stay with her for the night, and she signaled approval with a motion of her eyelids. Her maid, who had been dutifullly awake, sewing some white undergarment by candlelight, curtsied to them and asked leave to retire. She knew that when the prince visited his wife for the night, he liked to undress her himself and comb out her hair.

Rhaegar unfastened the two dozen little hooks of Elia's bodice and lightly passed his palms over her back, now covered only with a translucent muslin undershift, feeling the grateful sigh of her skin released from the tight satin, the muscles of her spine settling into relaxation. He eased the unfastened dress down her hips, and she stepped free of the rustling mess of skirts on the floor.

"When are the new dresses ready?" – he asked, warming her swelling breasts in the cups of his hands, gently massaging the dull ache of early pregnancy out of them. He was grateful that she had explained to him how this swelling, delightful to his touch and sight, felt burdensome to her, and how he could give her most pleasure and relief. Once she had explained that, he started worrying more about her clothes: it wouldn't do for her to suffer in overtight fashionable bodices that were not fitted to her changing size.

She undid his tight broad aurochs-hide belt in return, but before she had time to do anything else he stopped her –

"Not just yet, love, or we will have you go to bed with your hair all tangled and unbrushed." – He seated her at the mirror. It took him more than a few minutes to remove all the variously shaped hairpins, unbraid the elaborate lacing into which her lustrous, rich raven-dark hair was pleated by her artful chambermaid in the morning. He took the turtle comb first and carefully straightened and untangled her locks starting with the ends, getting more and more aroused as he drew his fingers through the thick silken mass of her hair, leaning down to bury his face in its warm musky smell. When he started rhythmically brushing it out with a hog-bristle brush, her face in the mirror melted into expressionless relaxation, eyes half-closed, her breaths coming deep and measured, as if in sleep.

Yet when he was done, she didn't make a sign to take her to bed but rose, turned away and went to the window. He sat down on the bed, waiting impatiently. She stared silently, endlessly through the diamond-shaped window panes, and Rhaegar realized it was snowing outside. He struggled with the urge to ask her what she was thinking about: Elia never liked to be asked this useless question, and if she answered, it was never to his satisfaction.

The snow was falling softly and whitely in the dark, muffling his inflamed and confused feelings.

 

***

His father was already at the table with Lord Whent when Rhaegar came down for breakfast the next morning. Aerys didn't sleep much these days, it seemed as if his mind was at a slow boil on some invisible fire. The sudden change in the weather unsettled him even more, and he was evidently ill at ease that he couldn't find someone human to blame for it.

"Did you see this snow, son? Lord Whent here is saying that we may have to cancel the melée and wrap up the whole affair. What nonsense, the tents get soaked and collapse! I'm sure it's going to melt by noon, is it spring, seven hells, or what?"

Their host looked more agonized than he ever did since they arrived – although he had been very upset from the start by the king's prohibition to invite any of the other guests under the roof of Harrenhal. Even the lords – and ladies! – of the great houses had to accommodate themselves in tents in the field, due to Aerys's fervid suspiciousness: he wouldn't share the roof with anyone who wasn't sworn explicitly to his service and protection. A mercy he stopped short of driving out Lord Whent himself with all his household. (Yet the quarters in which the royal family was staying were guarded most jealously, and no meat or drink passed the threshold without being tasted, nor were any of the Harrenhal servants allowed to enter. Lord Whent too had to leave his dagger with the first line of the guards before he was allowed into the parlor where they were now taking their meal. Needless to say, it didn't add to the fluency of his conversation).

"Your Grace," - he ventured, - "the snow is indeed likely to melt. This is why the field we prepared for the melée will be all slush and mud up to the knee. I fear there will be too many injuries – and no good show, to be sure."

"Nonsense! A good hack is always a good show! What, do you put off a battle if it's raining? Or if you have to fight even up to your waist in the water?!"

Rhaegar shuddered at the thought – it was good he wasn't supposed to take part in the great seven-sided melée. He saw the futility of urging the reasons of the cold and the general inconvenience for the guests. What would father care if he said the guests needed to pack up and reach some decent, dry and warm inn by night? Aerys's expectations of his subjects' devotion were always high, and now he would have less scruples than ever about requiring such a relatively trivial sign of loyalty as staying another night in drenched and collapsing tents. Of course the one person Rhaegar had in mind as having to shiver all night through was Lyanna (though he objected to himself that for her this probably wasn't _really_ very cold).

"My lord of Harrenhal," - Aerys was cutting a long story short, Lord Whent being unable to raise an objection – "please announce that the last day of your glorious tourney will proceed as planned. Oh – and add that any guest who shows disrespect to you and the king by leaving early will be duly punished." 

The foolish spite of this last addition in particular made Rhaegar boil with rage. But he knew better than to argue even then. Father would not hurt him directly, but he would take out his irritation on other persons in unexpected ways. Rhaegar looked down and breathed heavily with anger, and buried his nails in the palms of his hands.

 ***

Rhaegar's reserve didn't avail for much in the way of alleviating his father's mood. Aerys rode out with three of the Kingsguard and with Rhaegar following most reluctantly in his rear, to see to it that all the guests remained on the grounds and every party was duly preparing for the melée. He intercepted a Westerling party who seemed to be packing up because their younger son, just knighted, was sniffling and coughing and had a fever. The king ordered for the youth to pull himself together like a knight that he was, and come out into the field. Mercifully, Lyanna was not to be glimpsed anywhere. In the early dusk that gathered over the great seven-sided mess, Rhaegar seemed to spot the young Westerling being carried off the field with a broken leg. This is the king's cure for the boy's cold, he laughed cynically in his heart.

It was a great relief to start on the way home the next day. On the pretext of taking care of Elia, Rhaegar was determined to not come near his father for their entire ride, which, if the weather continued as wet and gloomy as now, might last whole five days instead of the usual three that it took to get from Gods Eye to King's Landing on dry roads. Rhaegar was falling back again and again to thinking of Lyanna, how she was looking now at the snow being trampled into mud under her grey mare's hooves, how steam was rising from the horse's hind, as she was riding north at this very moment, while he and Elia and their court were making their way south.

Gods, he wanted to be Lyanna – single and whole like a gem, and as firm. She had cutting edges, and she shone no matter what way you looked at her. He wanted to be her, riding into her pure and ancient and misty North, to her hoary-headed father, sick with grief but still himself, still staying his reasonable, same, reliable self for his children.


	3. Elia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elia inhaled Ivorie's presence, which enveloped her like a warm cloud. Like when you enter the forest, and the air is full of life.  
> "Gods, I can't believe you're here, Ivy!.. I can't believe you haven't been here all these years."

The sweet, invigorating scent of orange peel mixed with some other spice wafted into her nostrils. It was daylighht, the light transparent window hangings were blown by a soft breeze – she was in her own bedchamber.  
  
She felt so weak it was almost too much trouble to draw breath. And she was still bleeding, the diaper cloth between her legs and under her butt was all soaked and needed changing. At the same time her body rejoyced at its newly regained smallness and separateness, at the freedom to lie on her back again.  
  
Through the shimmering of this peace and rest and sunny late morning air even the recollections of labor swam up lazily and had no power to scare or hurt: the ever stronger waves of pain that came over her with each contraction, with the pauses between them becoming shorter and shorter. The wild force that woke up inside her womb when it was time to push the baby out, and how it took all her self-possession to not overtly panic at this force. The moment after the baby's head was out and he splashed out of her, it seemed, in one splash, like a fish – that was a happy memory. The gushes of blood that kept coming after, and the sudden realization that it's too much blood flowing out of her, which made her heart flutter and her breath become shallow. The bitter taste of the drug and hearing the Archmaester say, through the dirty cloud it brought over her head: "If she pulls through this time, she should not risk bearing another child."  
  
The baby was not with her. She recalled Rhaegar taking him up in his arms, minutes after birth, bundled in snow-white swaddling cloth, already marked with embroidered black-and-red dragon medallions. Recollecting the sight of them scratched inside her chest like an accidentally swallowed fishbone. Now he must be showing the baby to the rest of the royal family and the court. They will be back soon, the baby must be hungry. The Archmaester was wroth at her refusal to take a wet nurse this time: both, he argued, because she is utterly exhausted from blood loss, and because it is quite a scandal, for the crown prince's wife to give the baby her own teat. Not in the Targaryen royal line. But in Dorne, it is different: all Dornish highborn ladies breastfeed their children. So she acted too weak and distressed to be crossed – not that it took a lot of acting, really – and the Archmaester left her alone. But in fact, she did not want her child to be first and foremost Rhaegar's baby, which could very well happen: her husband was so completely beside himself with the fact that it was a boy this time. Rhaegar's talk of the prophecy yesterday gave her the creeps. Even more she dreaded the thought that King Aerys might take to petting his new grandson too often. Breastfeeding was simply the best way to keep the baby close to her, at least for now.  
  
As for her blood loss, help was on the way: her childhood friend Ivorie Yronwood had left her father's castle two weeks ago with a load of herbs and potions used by Dornish midwives. They hoped, in fact, that Ivorie would be there to help Elia through labor, a duty she lovingly performed to all the women in her extended family – but the royal baby arrived just a little earlier than they expected, while Ivorie was slowed down. The weather in the Boneway pass was raging, thunder storms and pouring rain drew down avalanches of dirt and stones, like no one remembered happening so late in the spring.  
  
Could it be the weather too that kept Ashara's letters from arriving? Elia wrote to her three times since the last raven from Starfall had arrived, and no answer. She missed Ashara increasingly from the day her father came to the Red Keep and took her back home, in such a rash too. The king didn't grant Lord Dayne the urgent audience he requested, so Ashara's father stormed into Elia's presence instead, to tell her that Lady Dayne fell dangerously ill and wanted her daughter by her side. Ashara left in tears. Before parting, she told Elia that she had felt something was wrong at home – that's why she had been anxious, sickly and sad of late. Several weeks later Ashara wrote to her that her mother's life was no longer in danger, but said nothing about herself. Soon her letters stopped altogether. Well, as long as they did come, the king fumed and spat every time the Archmaester announced a letter from Starfall. Rhaegar could barely dissuade his father from ordering Lord Dayne back to King's Landing to throw him into dungeon, for snatching away the princess's lady-in-waiting without royal permission.  
  
King Aerys's moodiness and suspiciousness were growing by the day. His presence was like poison to her, that was why she wanted to protect her new baby from being around him. Alas, she could no longer protect Rhaenys. It was only with the children, Rhaenys and his own young son Viserys, that the king still resembled his old self, kindly, humorous and easy-going. When watching him at such moments, Elia felt painfully sorry for him. This was part of the reason she didn't have the heart to prevent Rhaenys from seeing him. The other part was, she didn't know what Aerys might do if she did try. But with the baby, perhaps she can unobtrusively set up a different order of things. Perhaps at least for some time…  
  
There was a knock on the door, and Rhaegar came into her chamber, carrying little Aegon. The bundled babe was now wrapped in a splendid coverlet shining with tender blues, lush greens and sunny yellows. Now that was a welcome change from the austere black-and-red on white!  
  
"Look what Mother has made for him," – Rhaegar said.  
  
"Oh dear, give him to me, daddy, quick!" – she propped herself up on the elbow with some difficulty. -- "He must be starving. Look now, how he is searching with his mouth – here you go, my little bird." – She snuggled the baby on her arm and plugged his searching beak-like mouth onto her nipple – "…Now queen Rhaella, isn't she amazing? Look at this: you can barely figure out this is knitting, it looks like some fluffy carpeting. But what is this thread made of? It feels like it's spun from something tickly and warm – maybe a summer cloud?" – Elia laughed aloud, for the first time in these two days.  
  
Rhaegar leaned down smiling and kissed her and then the baby.  
"Darling, I will tell her you were mighty pleased with her present! It's made of the wool of sheep from the Summer Islands. I fear I wouldn't know how they dye the wool in such brilliant colors. Who knows, maybe these are the natural colors of these sheep!"  
  
Now they laughed together, as they used to laugh in earlier, more lighthearted times. Elia closed her eyes. The baby's sucking made her sleepy. She pictured a sandy island with clumps of green, munched on by rainbow-colored fluffy sheep.

  


***  
  
She woke up from the familiar touch of a cool, silky palm stroking her forehead.  
"Ivy!"  
  
Ivorie smiled and leaned down to kiss her.  
"Elli. So good to see you, love. You are so pale." – Ivorie's eyes were radiant with concern and attention. Her two hands cupped Elia's cheeks. Then she took both Elia's hands. – "You will be well very soon, I promise you."  
  
Elia inhaled Ivorie's presence, which enveloped her like a warm cloud. Like when you enter the forest, and the air is full of life.  
"Gods, I can't believe you're here, Ivy!.. I can't believe you haven't been here all these years."  
  
"No, neither can I."  
Ivorie sighed and got up to turn away, unpacking a small traveling coffer she had put on the toilet table under the mirror. Scents of southern herbs filled the room.  
  
"Where is your chambermaid, Elli? I've sat here for an hour and never seen her. Is she taking good care of you and the little prince?"  
  
"Well, yes, considering. She's a kingslander, and believes that it's more than enough to change the baby's diaper once a day."  
  
"Pfff – scoffed Ivorie, -- but don't you have any Dornish ladies-in-waiting who would know better?"  
  
"You see, Ivy, ever since Ashara left me, I didn't want any other ladies-in-waiting. I don't know what I might have done to her: she hasn't answered my letters for well nigh three months."  
  
Ivorie turned and looked at Elia with inquisitive care.  
  
"You haven't heard from her for three months? What did she say in her last letter?"  
  
"Not much… That her mother was beyond danger, that the weather finally felt like real spring…"  
  
Her friend left the jugs and mixing bowls and sat down by Elia's side again.  
"Look, -- she began softly, hoding Elia's hands in hers, -- I never was close to lady Ashara Dayne, but I know more than you do: she is with child, from an unknown father, and Lord Dayne has locked her in a tower at Starfall to avoid disgrace."  
  
Elia only looked at Ivorie with her eyes wide open: she was speechless. Something in her face made Ivorie rush to her coffer and start dabbing Elia's temples and brow profusely with some cold, sharp-smelling liquid.  
  
"How do you know then?" – Elia finally wispered. – "If her father locked her up, out of everybody's sight?"  
  
"Elli, I am so sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. You know, rumor flies quicker than ravens. And it would be worse if I left you in the dark, and you heard this from someone else."  
  
Ivorie suddenly paused, and her face changed:  
"Would you be so distraught if you heard the same about me??"

They were close from the time she and her brothers first went to stay in Castle Yronwood, sheltered by its seaside mountain nook from the fierce heat of midsummer south-easterly winds. Castle Yronwood was built so long ago it might have been by a first-hand disciple of Brandon the Builder. It must have taken true architectural genius to make the most of the diurnal alternation between sea breeze and mountain breeze, the morning shade and the evening warmth. Where the family's name came from, Elia never found out, but curious woodwork made of heavy glossy ironwood was imported generations ago from the milder climate of Volantis – as Ivorie told her when they first met. Ivorie was nine at the time, two years younger than Elia. She acted as a consummate hostess, showing the young lady Martell around – and Elia still remembered that she wore a pearly pink muslin shift fastened with a broad silver sash under her non-existent breasts.  


They turned out to be like two peas from the same pod, thinking the same on so many issues, books and people; loving and detesting the same foods. Their childhood nightmares sometimes coincided, as they found out to their mutual delight. It was in its own way delightful too, to fall out with Ivorie – it felt safe, unlike with any other close friend or relative; Elia felt that even if Ivy gets furiously mad at her, she will never cross her out, never turn away from her completely. They didn't become physically intimate until four years later, but that came too, in due course.  
  
It didn't happen before Oberyn planted a thorn in Elia's mind, telling her a story about a cursed baby that was born in House Martell in olden times, long before the Targaryen conquest. The baby was equipped with both male and female organs. Lord Martell, the father, whose name the story didn't tell, was told by a septon to take the baby to a deserted beach and leave – him? her? it? – there, with propitiatory rituals returning it to the Stranger, from whom doubtless it was sent. And the father probably did it, for no one heard of that creature any more, and after a short while its mother wasted away and died in shame and grief.  
  
These words stayed with Elia, and came to haunt her when she was at her weakest and most vulnerable. Wasted away and died in shame and grief.

Ivorie took up the baby, who was still sleeping like a little bird by night, and put him in the cot. She helped Elia off the bed and washed her over a basin, and changed her diaper-cloth wrappings, and her night shirt, and the blood-stained sheets. When the maid came back, Ivy sent her to the kitchen with detailed instructions on what was to be cooked for the princess.  
  
"Look, Elli – she chatted – I brought some baby pants from home, but we need to find some stuff to replace the silk moss with: it doesn't grow anywhere north of Yronwood."  
  
"But that's perfect! No laundress can really wash out the baby poo stains anyway. How much better to have a lining that's soft and sweet to the skin, and can be thrown away." – Elia made as if she wanted to get up to hug Ivorie, but sighed and lay back down on the pillows.  
  
"Ivy…"  
"Yes?"  
"I can't get over the news about Ashara. Is anything known about… the man she was with?"  
  
"Elli, the Seven help me! How well your prince has protected you from hearing anything. What, don't you really have any inkling about the proposed marriage to Brandon Stark, which Lord Dayne had spurned because the Starks fell out of favor at court?"  
  
"I know full well about the Starks falling out of favor. Lord Rickard's never shown his face at court in two years, and … our king has serious questions to pose to him. Rhaegar was adamant about not disclosing to me what they are precisely. From what I could gather, the king is fearful of Winterfell supplying the Black Watch with armor and provisions beyond what is allocated by the crown… as if he feared that the black brothers might turn the points of their swords south, the Seven forgive me…"  
  
Elia hushed abruptly, as the carved rosewood door creaked and her chambermaid entered. The chambermaid was of a short stature and a little plump, her watery eyes a little bulging, her greyish-blond hair fastened with a pair of horn combs with little ember drops worked into them – the most beautiful detail of her appearance.  
"Ivory, this is lady Frayna, my constant helpmate and companion."  
  
"Well met, lady Frayna" – Ivory responded. The maid curtsied in silence, probably not sure how to place the stranger who seemed quite well established in the princess's bedchamber.  
  
It took her some time and encouraging questions from Ivy before she started talking. But when she did, there was no stopping her. Between her brief excursions out to empty the slop-pail and take the heap of bloodstained linen to the laundry, she filled the ladies in on everything that went on in the Red Keep. A red-eyed raven flew in from the Citadel, finally, after three years of spring's half-hearted attempts, announcing summer. In the kitchen they were broiling trouts, and had already sent for beef and chicken livers for Her Grace the Princess's dinner, as Lady Yronwood bid. His Grace the King visited the queen's quarters, for which reason Her Grace would not leave her chamber today (her chambermaid told me that she is bitten and scratched all over, even her face – Frayna lowered her voice to a whisper – the king took her by force, the guards by the door heard her scream "No, you are hurting me!" Well, Her Grace should blame herself, considering how rarely she admits her husband's presence). Princess Rhaenys wanted to see her grandmother, but wasn't admitted either, and her nurse and governess took her for a day's trip on the seaside, accompanied by Sir Jaime of the white guard.  
  
After Ivorie paid her with small coin of some Dornish gossip, Frayna left them, sent to procure as much lint as she could get, for diapering the baby.  
"Elli, how can she say that kind of thing in your presence?!"  
  
"What kind of thing?"  
  
"About the queen, that she should blame herself."  
  
"Well, it's everyone's talk in the king's household," – Elia replied, unsure now what she thinks about this.  
  
"Did you discuss this with Rhaegar?"  
  
"Oh, no. I didn't try to raise this topic with him – I know it hurts him sorely."  
  
"What about you? Doesn't it hurt you?"  
  
"I never thought about this, to tell you the truth, Ivy. I ache for the poor queen Rhaella, and for Rhaegar, and for my daughter, who in the end cannot be protected from the resonances of this obscenity, however we might try. I even sometimes feel sorry for King Aerys, the Seven have mercy on his soul."  
  
"Elia, in a place where everyone says "She should blame herself"– you are not safe."  
  
"But Ivy -- he is her husband."  
  
"Elli, if a woman cries "No, you are hurting me" – it's rape, the court may say whatever it will. And if the king has the right to do it to his wife, who said you or any other woman is safe from him?"  
  
"For shame, Ivy, Rhaegar will never let this happen. He will protect me."  
  
"Can he protect his mother?"  
  
Elia fell silent, deeply shocked by the idea: not that Aerys might turn his violent madness on her, but that Rhaegar and the court's opinion might not stand firmly by her side if he did.  
  
She was looking down now, but Ivorie waited patiently till she could look her in the eyes.  
"Elli, we must leave. I will take you out of here." 

A week later Elia felt strong enough to leave her chamber and even take a walk on the battlements of the Red Keep. The summer announced itself with a warm breeze from the sea, which struggled with the renewed stench of the city's open slop trenches and latrines, still the custom not only in Flea Bottom, but even in some better parts of the city. Ivorie, who walked with her arm in arm, carried baby Aegon secured by a soft wide woollen sling across her shoulder.  
  
"Listen, Ivy, -- she said, -- what puzzles me most now is Frayna."  
  
"What do you mean, Elli?"  
  
"Why did she side with Aerys, when she told us about him and the queen? Do you know who she is? Here, in the free wind and outside the red walls, I can tell you, though not too loudly. She is of House Hollard. All of her kin were exterminated by Aerys in the winter, after their liege lord Darklyn took him hostage. Frayna survived, because she was raised as a ward by one of the lesser branches of House Darry, residing in King's Landing. Before anyone remembered about her existence, the family wanted to whisk her out of the king's range. So they privately asked me to take her as a lady-in-waiting, under a false name as some obscure Darry second niece. They were right that the best place to hide her from the king was under his very nose; he never questioned the story I told Rhaegar. But what I don't understand is, how can she justify him in anything, least of all – in offering violence to another woman?"  
  
  
"Oh, well… -- Ivorie sighed. – People will cling to what has deprived them…" 

Appointed by Elia as her personal Maestress Midwife and Physician, to the barely concealed infuriation of Grandmaester Pycelle, Lady Yronwood declared that the princess requires a change of air, for her health to be restored after the difficult birth. It went unstated but plain that, as another labor might be fatal for her, the princess would also benefit from a change of residence, away from her husband. The infant dragon was to depart with her.  
  
Rhaegar and their daughter came to the royal wharf to see them off. Rhaenys, who had just turned five, was sad and a little frightened, but did her best to put on a brave appearance of a true Targaryen princess. She wore a dress of black silk with a long trail that looked comical on her little figure, in broad daylight on the pier. A crystal diadem glared in her flowing silver hair (it was no use arguing with her – the moment she saw the High Septon's headdress, she wanted to wear shining crystal on her head too). Elia's heart ached to look at her, not knowing when she will see her again.  
  
"You love your grandmother, do you, Rhaenys?" – she whispered, kneeling to embrace her daugher (there was no question of lifting the girl in her arms, not a fortnight after the labor – although she wanted to do it so much).  
  
"But I love you too, mother!" – Rhaenys said, struggling with tears.  
  
"We will see each other soon, my dear, I promise. Your little brother will miss you. And I will miss you so very much." – Elia kissed both her cheeks and her brow and hastened to get up, before the girl could see the tears quickly welling up in her eyes.  
  
Her husband took her unusually pale hands in his and held them to his chest.  
  
"Darling, I know that you will not be miserable with Lady Yronwood. I know even more, that you will be happy."  
  
His words stuck her like a lightning, and it must have shown in the shocked glance she returned him. He embraced her and whispered in her ear:  
"The captain is a man in my trust. When you are out of sight of land, turn south."


	4. Lyanna-2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna and her brothers come back home from the tourney at Harrenhall - and very soon she leaves again for the Eyerie, at the prompting of her father.

Lyanna-2

Lyanna's journey back to Winterfell from the Tourney of Harrenhal was uneventful. As the old saying went, while there was a Stark at Winterfell, a maid could travel the Kingsroad from the Neck to the Wall in her birthday dress and never be molested. Generally, people in the North are not prone to highwaymanship – one cannot survive for long as an outlaw in the forests when the winds of winter start to blow. What is more, thought Lyanna as she rode with her brothers ahead of the wagons, it is so difficult, so toilsome and costly to preserve a life in the North against the elements; no wonder the northerners are much less likely to squander their own or another's life away for nothing, in an empty brawl or a drunken riot. Or a seven-sided melée, for that matter…  
  
Her father came out to meet them before the great front gate of the castle. He looked majestic still, with his flowing gray hair tossed by the wind, his broad shoulders straightened out, and his whole ample figure uplifted with the joy of the meeting, so he looked younger than ever he did in the last two years. Brandon inherited his stature. The eldest son dismounted first and came to embrace his father, but the three younger siblings forgot the decorum and jumped on Lord Rickard all together, and their greetings could be hardly called articulate. As they crossed the castle yard, the boys all tried to outtalk each other about the tourney, so that Lord Rickard had to shout to the servants at the top of his lungs:  
\-- Hey, everyone, get the baths piping hot, and clean dress layed out, and the dinner served! My children are home! 

Next morning her brothers rode out to Wintertown right after breakfast. Benjen clamored for going to the Friday fair, and she knew that what attracted him most was the great swing, made like a miniature ship of the ironmen. It lifted ten, so half the swingers faced one way, to the center, and the other half opposed them. Of course Ben wouldn't admit that this penny pleasure was the main thing for which he would ride to Wintertown. As for Ned, he must have been hoping that his favorite bard would appear – there was no telling which Friday he would be there and which not. Brandon… actually, she had no idea what made Brandon go.  
  
Anyway, she declined to join them. She wanted to spend the morning at home, to sit with her father at the fire and read through the mail that arrived in her absence. Not that there was a lot of it – a letter from Barbrey Ryswell with another urgent invitation to visit her at the Rills; a sweet formal note from Princess Elia, thanking Lady Lyanna Stark for her company at Harrenhal; another one, from Greywater Watch.  
  
\-- Who is writing you, daughter? – Lord Rickard asked, lifting his eyes from the heavy volume of their very own Maester Walys's History of the Free Cities.  
  
\-- Oh, this one is from the son of Lord Reed. I met him at the tourney. He is so kind – tells me he sent us some presents… I particularly love the – let me read – "seven floor carpets of plaited reeds; they are incomparably better than the plain rushes that even our best houses use; their patterns of light gold and brown are so much more pleasing to the eye." – Lyanna would have trouble explaining the reason for this profusion of gifts that Howland Reed was sending. Needless to say, she didn't tell, nor was she planning to tell her father of her escapade as the Knight of the Laughing Tree and the story that led up to it.  
  
Her father gave her a wry look:  
\-- You have been making acquaintances I see.  
  
\-- But I had no idea that Sir Howland Reed was into interior design. He looked quite the image of a tough, ascetic warrior when I first met him – Lyanna parried, laughing inaudibly inside. 

After a while, Lord Rickard stopped reading, sighed and coughed a couple of times, stirred the fire, and it clearly looked as if he wanted to open a conversation but didn't know what to start from.  
  
\-- Father?  
  
\-- Yes, Lya… I did want to talk to you about something.  
  
\-- What was it, my lord?  
  
\-- Oh well, oh well… Matchmaking it was, a difficult subject to broach with you, my lady daughter.  
  
Lyanna smiled and leaned back in her armchair.  
  
\-- I'm ready to hear you out, my lord father.

\-- That's good. So. Brandon. Did he have a word with you at all?

\-- About what?

\-- The talk he had with Robert Baratheon, the Lord of Storm End.

\-- Father? Do you mean Ned's chum from the Eyrie? Lord Arryn's ward? Oh yes, the guy who won a drinking contest at Harrenhal!

\-- Lyanna, he is of age now, and he is his own man. His parents are dead. And he is a great lord and a good match for a bride of your standing. Brandon acted like a good brother to you, having talked to Lord Baratheon before you left Harrenhal. He payed attention that you caught the man's eye.

\-- How extraordinary. I didn't pay attention that I did.

\-- Well, for this there can be two reasons. Either Lord Baratheon is a very discreet man. Or your attention was occupied by someone else. Or both.

\-- Or neither! – Lyanna flashed out. – How about it's all just Brandon's ambitions? I can picture him inviting this Robert Baratheon quietly for a drink of our best beer, just to start a talk about me and my marriage prospects!

\-- My dear Lyanna, -- her father rose from his seat, to conclude the conversation. – I am certainly not about pressuring you, but I did want to bring this topic to your attention. If you are willing, I can send you together with Ned to spend two or three moons at the Eyrie and get to know the Lord of Storm End a little better. He is no longer Lord Arryn's ward, he is a man grown, but I know for a certainty he plans to spend some more time now with his old warden and Ned; they are like family to him.

\-- You know for a certainty because Brandon told you. This brother of mine should change his sigil to a fox. He sniffs out what people want and don't want to do before they know it themselves. 

\-- That he might – Lord Rickard laughed. – But you will tell me for yourself what you want or don't want to do in this matter. I will not rely on Brandon to tell me.

Lyanna couldn't help laughing too, and got up to embrace her father.  
\-- Oh, my lord, you are the best father living… As long as you're not trying to be sly… To think that you needed to protect me from an offer by Howland Reed!

***

In another fortnight, she and Ned were riding south again. Robert had written a decorous letter to Lord Stark that he would be delighted to spend several weeks in the company of Lady Lyanna, who, he was sure, would make the most welcome addition to the circle of those he loved most in this world, before he would have to depart from his beloved Eyrie and assume his responsibilities as the Lord of Storm End.

What she wouldn't tell her father was not only the whole story with Howland Reed. She would be even less prepared to tell him – or anyone else, for that matter – that she fell to thinking about Prince Rhaegar a lot more than she felt comfortable to admit. Their encounters near Gods' Eye Lake were so unlike anything else in her life that she felt she couldn't explain it even to Ned, who already knew some of the story. Although her brother was generally her closest confidant, discreet, gentle and attentive as he was – but now, even riding with him for days on end, it seemed she couldn't even mention the name of Rhaegar – it seemed it would burn her tongue and lips if she did. Rhaegar Targaryen. How can such a name come about, in the world of simple revolving seasons and plain unchanging needs of life? It is like a rare bird, so rare it's a true miracle, with plumage of fire. Like a comet star that she only read about and couldn't imagine appearing in the sky. His voice, spanning in one song the whole expanse of time, from the legendary Azor Ahai to our very own day and beyond.

As they started out each morning, she and Ned would gallop ahead of the wagon with gifts and provisions, driven by old Yorwick Cassel, so that by noon there were several hours of the wagon's creaking between the servant and them. They would dismount on some tolerably dry and even glade, in view of the Kingsroad, so that Yorwick wouldn't miss them. Ned unpacked the lunch that he remembered to stash in his saddlebag in the morning, and she pulled out of her saddlebag the spare flagon of beer.  
  
\-- Hey, sister, did you finish the other one already? You sure you'll be up to swords practice today?  
  
\-- You wait and see, little brother.  
  
\-- I beg your pardon, I'm your older brother.  
  
\-- Oh, who cares. Brandon is enough of an older brother to me, I don't need another one. 

Lyanna had been to the Eyerie before, when their mother was still alive. They had a very warm connection with Lord Arryn, who raised Ned as a ward since he was eight. In fact, this ease and warmth between the two great houses was quite the opposite of what the institution of wardship was supposed to hold in check: rivalry, barely concealed enmity, the ever-present possibility of a feud. What has changed? – thought Lyanna – Why is it different between us? Is it that our families are established each in its own quarter of Westeros, my father being the Warden of the North, Lord Arryn – of the East, and why would East clash with North, as long as the sun is making its ordained circles?  
  
The Eyerie loomed in the sky as always, like a half-fantastical castle of clouds.  
  
At the Gate of the Moon the packs and crates that their father was sending to Lord Arryn and his household were unloaded from the wagon and laboriously bundled and hoisted across the backs of eleven mules. She, Ned and Yorwick had to leave their horses at the stables below and mount these wiry, tough and unsightly creatures too.  
  
Lyanna had always enjoyed the ascent to the impregnable stronghold of House Arryn. After the rampart of Snow, the path became so narrow that it seemed they flew between two abysses, slowly, like an eagle gliding in the sky with its wings spread. No other name could possibly be chosen for this ancestral seat, nor any other sigil or words could be possibly imagined for this ancient house.  
  
She looked at Ned – he didn't seem to share her elevated mood. She would even suspect he was a little uneasy in his saddle – unless she knew that he had made this ascent so many times that it would make anyone blazé about it. He pointed above, to the honeycomb of "sky cells" lining the bottom of the castle walls.  
  
\-- Look at that – you see? All the holes in the top row are now stopped with something – looks like stone and mortar to me. I wonder what Lord Arryn's design is!

As they approached the stone wall of Sky, there loomed against it a gigantic human frame topped with stag horns. She was even frightened for a moment, before she realized that it must be her prospective bridegroom, Lord Robert Baratheon. At the tourney she didn't even pay particular attention that he had these monstrosities decorating his helmet. Or did he get himself a new one – perhaps to impress her? Well, he would make a dashing figure, if he let his hair our. And didn't wear these antlers.  
  
After greetings, which had to be shouted in the high wind, Robert and the rest fell into a long silence, which in more indoor circumstances would have been awkward.  
  
As they passed through the inner gates in the Eyerie's front wall, they found themselves in a warm, rather small chamber with a blazing fire, which looked really very much like an eagle's nest. Its walls were not paneled with boards, but seemed to be pleated of branches and twigs of redwood, fastened to masonry with little bronze hooks, so delicate they were nearly invisible . Jon Arryn waited for them there, and he beamed to see her brother, embracing him thrice, while he gave Lyanna a formal elaborate greeting, like a great lady – which she was little used to. He looked a well-worn man, yet he would still be handsome, with his silver gray hair and piercing light-gray eyes, if he didn't miss some teeth. A ruddy servant boy whose face Lyanna didn't see before offered them the ritual bread and salt, and wine in small silver tumblers on a shining silver tray decorated, naturally, with a falcon and a crescent. This was the Crescent Chamber, where guests could warm and refresh themselves after their long climb, and right now this was more needful than ever Lyanna felt on her previous visits. The wind outside had been biting cold. The Arryn household had moved up to the castle from the winter seat at the Gates of the Moon, beguiled by the signs of the false spring, and now that the next, unexpected instalment of winter set in, they apparently didn't want to move back – which might, Lyanna thought, feel like an undignified retreat for the proud inhabitants of the Giant's Lance.  
  
The first thing to be done next was to pay respects to Lady Alyson, Jon Arryn's mother. The lord of the castle ushered them into the the High Hall, which by contrast to the Crescent Chamber was chillingly spacious, snow white and full of daylight. Lady Alyson presided over the hall like a benign queen, occupying the Arryns' high seat of white weirwood. Was it her presence that made the hall look strangely alive, or the blue veinlike pattern of the walls' marble, with the meaningful silence of weirwood timber, which it retained even when cut down and turned into a piece of furniture – Lyanna couldn't tell. She thought that the Crone, the elderly lantern-bearing goddess among the Seven, must look very much like Lady Alyson, who heartily greeted them all by names and descended from her seat to meet and embrace them.  
  
The dinner, which was presently served in the same hall, surprised the guests with its richness and variety. They even had sea clams, shelled and fried in dough, which Lyanna never tasted before (she was sorry afterwards that she did, for they weighed heavily on the stomach, despite the tenderness of their flesh). She complimented the hosts on every course, and they told her with a good deal of pride that they had engaged a cook from Braavos. Lord Jon boasted that for the last course they would have oranges and other winter fruit, which they now received regularly from beyond the Narrow Sea through the port of Gulltown.  
  
\-- What a shame my father is all for the plain old Northern dishes, -- she complained half-jokingly.  
  
\-- I remember your dear late mother, Lady Leona, being quite fastidious about what she served to her guests at Winterfell. Didn't she bring her own cook from Oldtown? – asked Lady Alyson.  
  
\-- Oh yes, she did, but after she died, my father dismissed all the Oldtown serving-people who had come north with her – all those who wanted to go, that is. It's only her seamstress, old Bethany Bull, that stayed with us. She said she had no one and nothing to return to in Highgarden.  
  
\-- Lucky for you, my lady! If the old hag had been more agile in her youth and left some spawn back home, you wouldn't have the benefit of having these extraordinary dresses, -- interjected Robert.  
  
Lyanna could only lift her brows.  
  
Ned saw it fit to change the conversation, and asked the host:  
\-- My lord, we have noticed, as we approached, that the top row of sky cells has been walled. We wondered what the purpose of this change might be – may I ask you?  
  
Lord Jon looked somewhat disconcerted:  
\-- Well, my boy, we thought we needed more storage rooms for our supplies and such…  
  
Lady Alyson cut in confidently:  
\-- You needn't be ashamed of the real reason for which we did this, my son.  
  
Lyanna could barely stop herself from showing an impolite childish curiosity, and it took her some effort to look at Lady Alyson with a questioning but composed face.  
  
\-- We also walled the entrances to the rest of the cells. Ever since the late Lord Jasper imprisoned that mountain chief to get him to swear allegiance, I have been suffering from nightmares. Now, children, I rely on you to keep what I am telling you strictly between us. Time and again I dream that I am a painted and tattooed shaggy man sitting on a stone shelf above the deep. The wind is so relentless that I long to turn into stone. But worse than that is the thought that rises from the depths of my heart like a monster: what if I roll over the edge, what if I just step off. And I know that's what they meant me to feel when they put me here, that I may hear the call of the deep.  
It's very hard to wake up from this dream and recall that in fact I am Lady Arryn.  
When a man breaks the law, I agree that sometimes his life has to be taken. But to bring him by degrees to want to kill himself, make him his own executioner – this is… inhuman. That's why we needed more storage room in the Eyerie. (Although you know well, my dear Eddard, that our granaries are more capacious than those of Winterfell). 

***  
Robert flatly refused to engage in swords practice or any kind of rough sport with her.  
  
\-- My lady, this is certainly not proper for you. Now, look at me and look at you: I weigh probably some seven stones more than you do; and besides, I prefer hammer to swords.  
  
The last objection she even thought somewhat reasonable. Yet she felt uncomfortable about the idea of deferring to such a man as her husband, while they both understood she was no match to him in strength or stature. Of course she couldn't even begin to explain this to Robert: he came from the south, where they acted like women of good birth were securely above any physical confrontation with men, especially their men.  
  
As for conversation – Robert liked to talk, and clearly considered himself to be good at this. He talked a lot about his friends and his enemies, clothes and arms, fights and tournaments he engaged in – which Lyanna didn't object to, in its own right. He was not an avid reader, although he wasn't ignorant either – Lord Arryn took good care of his wards' education, and even changed the house Maester when it became clear that the previous one wasn't any good in getting the boys to sit down and study everything that young noblemen were supposed to know. In fact, there was a lot of difference across Westeros on what young noblemen were supposed to know. Lord Arryn disagreed with those who thought prowess at arms and knowledge of heraldry were the only truly useful branches of knowledge.  
  
Yet Robert wasn't very good at listening, and his wit, although lively, was somehow always… not exactly at her expense, but crossing some invisible borders and invading her own ground, naming things that were her own regardless of what she called them – like the joke about the seamstress. What was even worse, she seemed to sense a little condescension on his part towards Eddard, who was a year younger than him and very much infatuated with what he apparently saw as Robert's brilliance and superiority. And she couldn't shake off the impression that Robert considered them, although they were of a great house in Westeros, as a little backward, a little too close to the wildlings beyond the Wall. So Lyanna came to resent Robert for the two of them – since her brother neglected to do his part of resentment; especially when the arrogant stag would win a board game.

One day Lady Alyson sent her chambermaid to call Lyanna up to her solar. Lyanna promptly ascended, although her hair was somewhat disarranged from the morning escapade down to Snow. Somehow she felt at her ease with the old Lady of the Eyerie.  
  
Lady Alyson's solar was a haven of calm and contentment. The walls and the floor were warmly paneled with light golden maple and beech; soft fleeces were thrown here and there on the floor like white clouds; the wall and window hangings were of Lysean lace (Lyanna gasped at the expense). The lady's easy chair and the settee at the wall were richly cushioned with azure velvet and embroidery. Her desk had elegant carved legs, and the top was shaped like a bean, so that everything laid on it was closer to hand, when one sat in its bay.  
  
\-- Good day, my lady, -- Lyanna greeted her with deference.  
  
\-- Good day, my dear Lyanna. Will it please you sit?  
  
\-- Thank you, Lady Alyson, -- she sat down on a straight-backed chair that the hostess pointed at.  
  
\-- How have you been faring, my child? Is our solitary nest to your liking, in this unmerciful weather?  
  
\-- My lady, you are too kind. I have always liked staying at your castle – after all, it's above the Sky! -- she joked. – And there seems to have been no shortage of firewood.  
  
\-- But is the company warm enough for you?  
  
\-- Oh, you know that I greatly enjoy your and Lord Arryn's conversation – you are so full of stories, and the kind of stories I like, at that!  
Lady Alyson smiled but gave no answer and continued to look at her placidly, inquiringly.  
  
\-- My brother Eddard is always welcome company to me – that you know full well. He never refuses to come with me whenever I ask him… unless Lord Robert has asked him first.  
  
\-- Yes, I know. Ned has always been Robert's enchanted follower. Ever since he came here for the first time and Robert showed him around, like a lord in his own castle...  
  
Lyanna nodded in agreement, and then said:  
\-- I suppose Ned will be one day sorely disappointed.  
  
Lady Alyson sighed, then after a pause asked her:  
\-- Why do you think he will be?  
  
\-- Robert is boastful, and my brother has taken his every word for its full weight in gold so far, but this cannot last forever. And his coarse nature cannot agree with Ned for long.  
  
\-- These are wise words, my child. Robert is brilliant indeed in many ways, but if you are what I perceive you to be – you should mind your step with him.  
  
\-- Lady Alyson, I am so thankful that you are speaking of this with me.  
  
The old woman rose from the cushions and came close to Lyanna, speaking almost in a whisper:  
\-- I think there is something you need to know, and it is a thing I can hardly tell your father, who wants to match you to Lord Baratheon. I suggest you take a ride tomorrow down to the Moon's Gate. I want to send a potion to a poor woman there, who lives by the watermill. You will need to rise early tomorrow and go out quietly – only you and I should know of your errand. Dress in your simplest garments – better still, put on your leathers and helm, I know you've brought them along. – She smiled mischievously. -- When you come to the village, ask for Penny Stokes.


	5. Rhaegar 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She shouldn’t be noticed entering the city, he shouldn’t be seen entering with her – and he must meet and join her now, right now.

Rhaegar 2

The yellow light of the late afternoon outside fell into the throne room through the high stained-glass windows that converted it into a dark rainbow. The blood- and wine-reds, ghostly blues and bits of green inscribed this day’s light with somber glory of ages past.  
  
The council had just dispersed, after the king closed the assembly and rose from the Iron Throne. Rhaegar had no official place on the council, and it irked him immeasurably to be a witness of his father’s extravagancies and downright injustice without having a clearly defined stand from which to oppose them. His part as the crown prince was one of implicit support. But in fact, these days no one in the council could be sure enough of his foothold to straightforwardly object. Father had changed two Hands lately.  
  
Rhaegar nodded him goodbye and stayed behind, to try and compose his thoughts after this meeting, which bode much ill. Tywin Lannister was dismissed – or rather indignantly resigned – as the Hand, after Father took his elder son and heir Jaime into the Kingsguard (insult added to injury after Father’s earlier refusal to match Rhaegar to his strikingly beautiful and haughty daughter Cersei); Tywin then retired to Casterly Rock and fell ominously silent. Father, in his reckless bravado that had possessed him ever since, chose to ignore this. “No servant of mine should be indispensable,” he said. Of course, Rhaegar for his part was not sure if the lords of Highgarden, Dorn or the North shared this perspective of themselves as the king’s dispensable servants.  
  
But what made Rhaegar even more disconcerted were the family matters. The ruthless flame of Father’s madness was eating at the remaining ties between him and those who used to be his closest souls.  
  
His mother came to his chambers yesterday late at night, in secrecy. She was fighting back tears as she said to him: “Father is beginning to scare me.” He looked at her long in grave and deferent silence before she could continue: “He lays violent hands of me. When we are alone. I have no parents, no other sisters or brothers. I have no one to talk to but you, son.” 

“Mother, dear!!!” he took her cold trembling hands in his, but then he saw it wasn’t enough to quench the tremor that shook her entire frame, so he moved closer to her and folded his arm over her shoulders. She was sobbing, and he gave her time to wade through this violent storm of distress that now overtook her. When she could talk again, she said: “You were so right to send Elia away! And the baby. I feel as if some disaster is abroad, and it is Father’s demons that will bring it upon us!” 

“Mother, we need to make you and the children safe, too. I will do anything it takes, I swear.”  
  
They sat up far into the small hours, talking over the ways of removing her and the remaining children, Rhaenys and Viserys, a safe distance from the Red Keep without provoking Father’s suspicion and rage.  
  
Now, however, a gripping dreary sadness seized Rhaegar’s soul at the thought. Not only did it tear his heart to have to protect his mother from his father. He also suddenly couldn’t imagine how he would stay here all alone, deprived of every last bit of warmth once little Rhaenys were gone. He missed Elia bitterly, and that miraculous rush of pure life that he felt when holding the newborn Aegon.

The wild grief over the imminent parting that overtook him at these recollections made him rush now from the throne hall to the queen’s quarters, where Rhaenys’s chamber was. Approaching it, he heard from afar a pinching of harp strings, snatches of some song – probably improvised – and children’s laughter. Viserys, dressed in a fool’s motley, played a quarter-harp made specially for him, while Rhaenys danced and sang what, she explained, was an ancient fish song – back from the time when fish could speak and sing. He joined in with his daughter and little brother’s merrymaking, while sadness and apprehension coiled like a cold snake deep at the bottom of his heart.  
  
***  
  
He liked to ride along the top of the city wall when the evening would bloom into sunset. It felt like flying, almost flying into the flare of the sky with all its veils on fire.  
  
This time it was so warm – spring was now truly here to stay, and the sad broad singing wind, whose breath was released by spring and sunset, was washing his soul out of him.  
  
And the one person who this sense of limitless sky evoked in his mind was of course Lyanna. She was his air and freedom, a mental presence that opened his space, in fact, made it livable. Was she really more free than he was? Or was it just his illusion, his desire for her to be his paragon of freedom, of cool contentedness of mind, of eagle-like flying power? Why was Lyanna too so unbearably far away from him…  
  
His eyes now took in the plain stretching from under the city wall, bordered by the immense dimming sea in the east and stretching far into the north. The tender green haze of the newly sprung wheat fields was so rare that the heart could almost not bear its newness, its transience. A dust road unfolded across the plain, and he now saw a lonely rider on a weary horse, approaching the city.  
  
***  
  
An hour or so, it must have been, that passed after that moment brought action so unlikely that it seemed unreal. The figure of the lonely rider caught his eye – and then it set off an explosion in his mind. Because it was her – the way-weary, dusty and tattered, the radiant lady Lyanna of House Stark. It was like in battle, all of a sudden – the situation that he had to confront crashed on him totally unprepared, and one wrong move or a moment’s delay might have meant irretrievable loss, defeat, disgrace.  
  
She shouldn’t be noticed entering the city, he shouldn’t be seen entering with her – and he must meet and join her now, right now.  
  
He led his poor bewildered horse down the nearest stairs that led to the cobbled street below – a wonder the beast didn’t break his legs – and found his squire where he left him, in the City Watch’s den in the wall, drinking ale and throwing dice with off-duty gold cloaks. It would never do to let his father know about it, but Rhaegar often discharged his squire for an hour or two to escape for a lonely ride – only on these could he breathe and think – and compose another bit of the next song. He chose the northern wall for that, as far away as possible from the Red Keep. So, trying to keep his composure, he ordered the squire to return to the palace. In the unlikely event that His Grace the King were to inquire after his son in the evening hours, the squire was to say that the prince was spending the night in a pleasure house. And if the Queen inquired? Well, in that case – he would be come back very tired from his ride and be fast asleep. She probably wouldn’t insist on waking him, unless some true emergency happened. But should it indeed happen, the Seven defend? In that case, the Master of the Whisperers would know where to find him.  
  
How lucky it was that Father could never spare any knight of the White Guard now to escort the prince. His own personal squire, a short and somber Blackwood youth of seventeen years, was entirely devoted to Rhaegar and never asked unnecessary questions. Only the necessary ones – like he did now.  
  
So after dispatching the squire, he led the horse through the spidery back streets to the gate; snatched somebody’s ratty blanket that dried on a rope, to throw over the horse’s embellished saddle and girth. As if no time had passed since that evening in Harrenhal when he slipped out of the castle at nightfall, wrapped in a capacious grey hooded cloak, to seek her out among the tourney guests. This time his cloak was plain peasant brown. He bought it for one golden dragon off the shoulders of a bewildered cart driver who was entering the Dragon Gate in the north-most point of the city wall, from which he first glimpsed Lyanna across the emerald fields.  
  
For passing unnoticed, he also placed high hopes on the impending darkness. In his newly acquired cloak, he rode behind a party that luckily was just leaving by the Dragon Gate. From behind their backs, he could see that the lonely rider was approaching the city. Now he could see, from the way she held herself in the saddle, that she was exhausted, downcast and confused.  
  
But her expression changed beyond description when she spied him riding her way. As if a spark landed on her forehead and kindled her entire being. A broad smile blossomed on her face, and however hard she tried to beat it off and assume a more worldly expression, the smile just refused to go away. She soon pulled the hood low down on her face, following his example, and they entered the gate several hundred yards apart from each other.  
  
The northern part of King’s Landing was famous for its expensive brothels, but of course this was not a place where he would consider taking her. (It wasn’t where he would go himself, unless he had to.) He knew a sailors’ inn down south, close to Flea Bottom, which was nonetheless a decent enough place. The owner was a retired sea captain, with whom Rhaegar had once made acquaintance, when his father had briefly appointed him Chief Inspector of the Custom House at the age of fourteen (a trifle early for such a post, Rhaegar realized now). Wimund Rivers kept a respectable establishment, yet “respectable” with seamen never meant “boring,” so the prince spent many a night listening to travelers’ wild stories. Of course, he always came disguised – his solemn Blackwood squire had a surprising knack for face-painting. Only Wimund knew his real identity, and he was good sport.  
  
So he proved to be this time – and a loyal friend in need. He took the prince and his guest to a private chamber in the third story of the capacious inn, and left them there, with two tankards of beer, a supply or Rhaegar’s favorite pies and a pitcher and basin to wash their hands.  
  
And so again they were sitting across a wooden tavern table, over two mugs of dark beer, as they did on that damp evening in Harrenhal, months ago. And there was silence. There was so much each of them wanted to say that it completely smothered the little they could say upon meeting.  
  
At length, Lyanna sighed and said:  
“I am so lucky that you came to meet me.”  
  
Rhaegar rejoined:  
“The luck is all mine, my lady,” – and immediately felt how immeasurably far and cold the place was where these words put him.  
  
Lyanna sighed again.  
“I have ridden for a week. Hope my horse lives to see the light to-morrow.”  
  
“What forced you to hurry so?”  
  
“Oh, I fear you may laugh at the reason, if I tell you it.”  
  
“Never! Tell me, I beg you,” – he entreated.  
  
“So I will then. You know that my father wanted to engage me to Lord Robert Baratheon, do you?”  
  
“I have heard it said in the court, yes. It must have come to pass after the Harrenhal tourney – since you never mentioned it there.”  
  
“You are right,” – she agreed. – “My lord father announced his wish to me soon after we returned to Winterfell. Although to be fair, I shouldn’t call it a wish – it was his suggestion. He dispatched me with my brother Eddard to the Eyrie, to Lord Robert Arryn’s, where Lord Baratheon was staying – is still staying.”  
  
“This is very reasonable in a father, I find, to give the daughter some time to see for herself and consider a prospective match,” – Rhaegar opined like the coolest and most disinterested good friend in the world, although his heart sank.  
  
Lyanna reached over the table and put her hand on his for a moment.  
  
A fiery shock ran through his whole frame. She did it with such simplicity and naturalness, as if there never was any of that unfathomable snow-shrouded space between them, any distance of rank or official courtesy.  
  
When he regained his ability to listen, she was finishing a sentence:  
“… and so I took one day’s provisions and rode down to the Moon’s Gate village. Penny Stokes’ cottage was easy to find. It stood apart at the edge of the village, and it had an air of disaster about it. So I came in and saw a pale girl, with her hair all matted, rocking a crib. She looked bewildered and scared, so I proceeded softly. I explained to her that I was Lady Arryn’s guest, and that she sent me to Penny with her concerned sympathies and a potion to help her recover her strength, and some presents. Then I asked how she and the baby were faring, whether they were in good health.”  
  
Lyanna paused. He asked encouragingly: “And what did she say to you?”  
  
“I hoped that maybe the girl would talk to me, and I would understand what this whole errand is about – because I felt more strange and awkward by the minute. But instead of talking, suddenly, this Penny woman took a long deep breath – like the hissing of a snake it was! Her eyes went white and then red, and her face greenish-pale, and a voice came, from somewhere in her stomach, not really like any human voice.  
  
‘YOU! Hoping to have you a nice pretty life with your antlered groom! The sleek, the sick, the lying beast! Lured me and deceived me, and forced me and abandoned me! I curse you both! Never will he have a trueborn child, and you – stay with him, or go from him, you will not live!”  
  
She was visibly shaking now, and tears glistened in her eyes. Rhaegar was shaken too. He took both her hands in his and stroked them, calming her, his heart falling down some neverending well. She has been cursed, her world seems to have been shattered from within. And the curse came like a fate’s blow, completely unconnected with anything she did, undeserved.  
  
He continued to look at her mutely, concernedly, and she went on:  
“The girl seemed to be going into a fit, and the baby must have been scared and started crying. I felt like running away that instant, but it I guess I couldn't. So I rushed to her and started shaking her by the shoulders, and shouted to her – Penny! Penny! Wake up! Come back, your baby here is crying for you! After a while she went all limp, and I carried her to bed and then rushed to pick up the baby, because it was beginning to choke with screaming. Luckily, in a quarter of an hour Penny came to, and was able to take the baby from me. I made some hot honeyed milk for her, left Lady Arryn’s gifts and then took my leave. There was nothing I could do to help her.  
  
“But her words continued to ring like a bronze gong in my heart. It made no sense any more to go back to the Eyrie. I rode away without really knowing where I was going. I just rolled down slopes like so much water. When I was past God’s Eye Lake I realized that I was probably headed towards King’s Landing.”  
Rhaegar pressed her hands lightly.  
  
“This was really the right thing to do, dearest Lyanna. Your heart has led you the right way.” The Seven be merciful, he thought to himself as he was saying this, I wish I knew what I have to do to make these words true.  
  
***  
  
They sat and talked through the night, until Lyanna was utterly worn out with weariness, and he insisted she should lie down and have some sleep. He could see a trace of apprehension in her glance when she asked,  
  
“And what about you, Rhaegar, where are you to sleep tonight?”  
  
He smiled warmly at her:  
“I will have to ride home now and hope that my squire is not sleeping too heavily – otherwise he won’t hear the pebbles I throw at his shutters.”  
She had sat on her bed and shook her head with a groggy smile,  
  
“No, nonsense, you can’t go now, it’s the dead of night. You better catch some sleep before you go. If they are going to miss you at home, you can leave with the first light.”  
  
“But there isn’t even another bed in the room!” – he protested.  
  
To that, she got up and pulled the mattresses from the bed down on the floor – there turned out to be two of them.  
  
“If I could sleep out in the open yesternight, I surely can get to sleep when I have a roof above me.”  
  
He lay down gingerly in his clothes.  
  
“Can you please look away while I undress? I was lucky to pack a nighshirt when I left the Eyrie – my hands must have something prophetic in them, because it surely wasn’t my head told me I’d need it.”  
  
He rolled on his side and covered his eyes with an emphatic gesture.  
  
“What a shame,” – she said – “there is no bath to be had here. I am crusted all over.”  
  
Rhaegar assured her that once the owner of the place was up, she would have the best hot bath that could be had in the Seven Kingdoms – he would see to it. But, he added, she certainly didn’t look all that crusted to an outside observer.  
  
She blew out the candles and lay down by his side, pulling the blanket over her (he took the bedspread). Strangely, after all the daydreams and night-dreams and waking thoughts he had about her, now all physical desire was mute, in awe of her actual presence.  
  
Falling asleep, she whispered to him:  
“You are the first man I feel so safe with. Well, excepting my brothers. I know you will do nothing to me that I don’t agree to first. You are so good…”  
  
And she searched for his hand under the coverlet and intertwined her fingers with his, which sent a surge of pure happiness throughout his body and soul.  
  
***  
  
He was back at the inn next afternoon, as soon as he was done with the official business of the day on the Small Council, and with the secret arrangements for his mother, Viserys and Rhaenys to leave for Dragonstone on the morrow. No time was to be lost with dispatching them, Rhaegar felt. What was to become of him now, he didn’t know. But now that Lyanna was here in King’s Landing, somehow it didn’t matter – it felt as if his life had been fulfilled. She came to him in her distress, she sought him out, she trusted him.  
  
This time he brought his harp.  
  
Lyanna, who was now wearing a comfortably fitting grey-and-white dress (the efficiency of the former sea captain was incredible, when he found remuneration worthy), leaped with joy:  
“This is just what I wanted to ask of you when you left, but didn’t remember to, in my sleepiness!”  
  
A smile rose to his face irresistibly from the depth of his happiness.  
  
“What would you like me to sing for you?”  
  
“Oh, sing me the song from Harrenhal, remember?”  
  
“It was more than one – which one will’t please you?”  
  
“It’s the one I cried at – about the Summerhall sunsets.”  
  
He smiled – never did he have to play this melancholy song in such an exuberantly happy mood. But it came out very well, the brightness in his heart giving incandescent glow to the evening Summerhall clouds. Lyanna’s face was like rain in the sun, all tears and smiles. When he finished, she stood up behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders, then bent down and locked them on his chest. Her lips touched his hair behind his ear.  
  
Now he was close to losing his mind all at once. But he couldn’t let this happen, it was all so completely unclear and uncertain – what were they to each other? What future could there be for them? They were hanging, drunk and inflamed, precariously in mid-air. He understood that in Lyanna’s mind the dread prophecy of the poor Penny Stokes had done its desperate work, and she envisaged no future beyond what she wanted most and at once. Like the warrior that she was, she was ready to act, and face whatever end came. Yet he could not take advantage of this. Not without being able to offer some path, some kind of at least a flimsy wooden bridge over the abyss.  
  
There was an idea he had vaguely conceived some time before – fantastic as a three-headed dragon, a fool’s hope – yet a hope nonetheless, a route to be tried, today or never. He had to go to the Sept of Baelor now and have that unthinkable, that absurd conversation with the High Septon that he had groped through several times in his mind.  
  
But not just yet. Please, just one more song, just another snatch of time here in this room with her.  
  
He kissed her hand, then the other, and looking up to her, asked –  
“Would you mind another song, love? This is a song that I can’t sing as long as my father is alive. And maybe not even afterwards…”  
  
It was a song from him to her; he had been turning it over in his mind since the tourney. What other way, he thought then, did he have of giving her pleasure. It had him dreaming of dragons, and how the blood of the dragon was hard to contain, like the earth couldn’t contain its fire at the Doom of Valyria; and how his father was now a two-headed dragon, and so was his love. It built slowly, like some overblown ambitious sept in an impoverished lord’s backyard – and only this morning at dawn, as he rode home from the inn, did the final stanza come to him in its fullness. And he gasped, so obvious it was. The song that coiled its long body in serpent rings had to lift its head and strike. And striking meant asking for the decisive stroke from her – whether the fantastic monster of his love were to live or to die; in the song she held her ancestral sword.  
  
Lyanna listened intently. And he fancied that at the final lines she breathed very deep and grew imperceptibly taller and statelier. As if Ice was indeed in her own hands now, and her dignity was recovered, no longer vulnerable to any fear, malediction or taint.  
  
***  
  
“The old world has to break apart and a new one emerge,” said Rhaegar to the High Septon.  
  
“My prince, but you know that what isn’t recognized by all in the light of the Seven, is not legitimate in the matters of marriage. Even if the gods themselves told you to wed a woman in a secret cave, this would be no holy union.”  
  
“But how is brother wedding a sister more legitimate?”  
  
“That’s been part of this old world, as it pleased you to say, since its very establishment by the first Targaryens.”  
  
“How lucky those first ones were!”  
  
“Don’t envy them, my prince – they had a world scary and unploughed in front of them.”  
  
“If so, I am willing to put such a world in front of myself.”  
  
“As you wish, my prince. But I can scarce imagine how the Faith of the Seven may be of assistance to you. We will not replace one abomination with another – the familiar one with an unfamiliar. Westeros is not one of the Summer Islands, where the barbarians live in polygamy amongst them.”  
  
This sounded like the audience was over. Yet Rhaegar could not let it end there.  
  
“I understand, Your Highness, that the Faith cannot afford abolishing the old practice of incestuous marriage within the royal family…”  
  
The Septon hesitated – the tide of this duel might be about to be turned. So Rhaegar pressed on:  
“But does Baelor have enough influence to frame a respectable way of suspending one marriage and consecrating another – while giving a respectable position to my first Princess and retaining the order of succession intact among all my children?”  
  
“But what will Dorne say to this? Will this not occasion a war, on the cause of insult to House Martell?”  
  
“Your Highness, you may not know all the intricacies of what is passing between the Red Keep and the rest of the mighty Houses of Westeros – but you probably know enough to see that my matrimonial arrangements are probably the pettiest of the possible causes for war.”  
  
Reluctantly, the High Septon conceded as much. From that point on, it was a smoother way: they discussed the details of Elia’s status as Royal Dame Targaryen, the Princess Mother. Aegon would still be the first in the line of succession after his father. The only impassable place remained the formulation of the reason for which Princess Mother was no longer the Prince’s wife.  
  
Rhaegar stamped decisively:  
“On this matter, and in fact the rest, the Princess Mother herself needs to be consulted.”  
  
The Septon looked up at him in silence. If he weren’t talking to a prince, perhaps he would have voiced his opinion about the depraved frivolity of the young generation. They stipulated they would meet again once Elia’s reply was received. Rhaegar bowed to the haughty official and took his leave. Strange, he thought, that the High Septon never asked for the ultimate reason why the Faith and himself had to go to all this trouble: consecrating a new marriage, putting the old one on hold… Perhaps the reason was all too obvious to him. Rhaegar never entered into the matter of the prophecy – which in fact had first set his passion for Lyanna in motion. Oddly enough, it didn’t really signify any more – he wanted her now only for the sake of her sweet self.  
  
Before going back again to Wimund Rivers’s inn, he dispatched a raven to Castle Yronwood. Beyond the enumeration of her future titles and details of the royal provisions, he only had to ask, “Do you want to proceed with what you wished?”


	6. Spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a hairy eight-eyed spider, without the capital letter, minding its web in the middle of the ceiling of a private room at Wimund’s inn.

A knock on the door, and she startles up breathless from her cushioned seat, and the next moment she’s already slipping the latch open. He enters all shining and elate, and the radiance he gives off dazzles spider eyes. Such a beautiful face, its austere outlines suffused with the warmth of triumph, rapture and desire. She is glowing with her own light, her eyes moist grey diamonds, her skin in the slashes of her dress radiating warm milky whiteness. They approach each other slowly, speechlessly, inevitably, like a meeting of planets in an astronomer’s ken. Their first embrace is monolithic.  
Then the spell of stony planetary stillness is broken, and their hands become feverish, trying to take in all of the other’s body at once, groping for buckles and buttons and openings in the cloth as they are kissing without intermission. A trembling haze of shock rises from her mouth as his tongue forces itself in and she feels the pressure of his teeth – and then it turns into a red whirlpool that sucks all her cooler lights in. His brain emits golden shots that guide his hands lightly over and behind her ears – from which her knees weaken, and he slides his leg between her thighs. He now has taken her ear into his mouth entirely, tracing its snail curves with his tongue, and her eyes are open but they see nothing, they are looking inward.  
He removes her unfastened dress completely, impatiently peels off the underskirt and becomes immobilized, looking in a stupor at her dazzling full nakedness. Her broad shoulders breathe with easy power; her stature is effortlessly straight. Her strong muscular arms are graceful and the large hands intoxicatingly well-sculpted. Her breasts are round like moons, and like the moon they magnetize the eyes. She stands entranced by his worshipful gaze, as if the air holds her and enwraps her, feeling neither cold nor the least shade of embarrassment. He kisses her nipples and plays with them with his tongue till they are hard and bright like little squat round towers. His left hand cups and squeezes and warms her breast, and his right slowly caresses her pubic hair. Her breaths begin to come heavily one after another. Then he goes down on his knees and covers with wet kisses the perfect white inverted bowl of her stomach, licks her navel, slides his hot hands over her buttocks and grabs them with increasing strength. This draws the first audible groan of pleasure from her.  
He then holds her underneath her buttocks and lifts her off the floor, while her arms are locked around his neck, and carries her the few steps that divide them from the bed, carefully putting her down on the pillows. But her first spell of receptive enchanted passivity has now flown, the fire of her overexcitement has choked on its own violent intensity, and she sits up, smiling wryly at him. He is still not fully undressed, and she gets to correcting this oversight at once.  
She starts with removing his white undershirt, making him to lift up his arms: the beautiful muscular upper body throws her into a rapture again, and she loses herself in smoothing the light-golden skin, as if touched by the sun from birth, with her mouth and greedy palms and fingers. His nipples, too, respond to her teasing. Her hands slide down his lower back as she descends with kisses along the silken path of hair below his navel. She feels for the strings of his pants. But the strings are much less interesting than his cock that stretches the rich reddish-brown fabric – she feels how the cloth restrains his flesh with almost unbearable tightness, and hastens to free his erection from its grip. Now his penis sticks up almost at the right angle to his body, curving slightly upwards. He catches a glimpse of them in the dim mirror on the wall and smiles, pointing down:  
“You see? Isn’t this beautiful? This is because you are so beautiful.”  
A small skinny fly gets caught in the net, and the spider is distracted with its own business.


	7. Eddard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned sets out in search for his sister - but can he let his father and the rest of the realm know she has gone missing? And where should he turn? In his confusion and distress he lingers in Masha Heddle's crossroads inn.

His little sister didn’t come back to the Eyrie in the evening, nor did she come the following morning. Lady Arryn had to admit that she had sent the girl to the village below on a ladies’ charity errand, without telling anyone, but now she was herself alarmed. Should they send a raven right off to inform their father that Lyanna was missing? Robert would say, don’t be a pussy, try to figure out first what happened – so he decided to go to the village himself. But should he take Robert with him? On the surface of it, they should obviously go together – Lyanna was Robert’s bride-to-be, how could it even be a question. But for some reason Ned was hesitating, as if he sensed that Robert might spoil things somehow, make something go wrong beyond repair.  
  
However that might be, slipping away without Robert’s knowledge was not really an option. So once he got his travel things ready, Ned knocked on his friend’s door with the massive knocker that had a Baratheon stag on it. Robert had it made for him soon after he first arrived at Lord Arryn’s stronghold, after the sudden and terrifying death of his father Lord Steffon in a shipwreck in plain view of Storm’s End. If not for this tragic event, marking doors in his host’s castle might have been too presumptuous for a new ward, but Jon Arryn’s compassion took it as perfectly reasonable that the boy should establish for himself some semblance of a new home under his roof, now that his parents’ home was wrecked. As for Ned, it made him look up to Robert with a considerable admiration – how the older boy confidently made himself at home away from home and bought and ordered things that suited his tastes, like a lord and a man grown.  
  
He had to bang the knocker again, and then again, before Robert’s sleepy face showed itself in the crack of the door.  
  
“What is it, Ned? Why do you have to spoil a good morning’s sleep?”  
  
“You’ve skipped breakfast, Rob – are you saying it was your deliberate decision?”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“Will you let me in?”  
  
Robert growled in exasperation and opened the door to let his friend come in. He plopped back on the bed, trailing the long skirts of his magnificent silken morning gown.  
  
“Robert, Lyanna has gone missing.”  
  
The young man jumped as if stung and sat bolt upright.  
  
“What?!!!! How??”  
  
Ned explained that Lyanna went yesterday morning to visit a young girl down in the village, who had just given birth to a baby from an unknown father. When Ned mentioned her name, however, a shade flitted across Robert’s face.  
  
“It’s our old lady sent her, right?”  
  
“Yes, it was on Lady Arryn’s errand.”  
  
“What do you think can be keeping your sister?”  
  
“I don’t have an inkling, can’t even think of any dangers between here and the Moon Gate – except the narrow path, but even that is watched over – we would have heard of it if her horse had slipped, the gods defend.”  
  
“Listen, Ned, my guess is – she might want to look around, rode down to the valley, perhaps stayed at an inn or at the Royces’. She should be back soon enough, let’s just wait.”  
  
Ned couldn’t be convinced by this soothing presupposition.  
  
“Glad you are not alarmed, Rob – but I would go down and check in the village in any case.”  
  
“All right, chap, once you find her, tell her I can’t wait to see my adventurous bride back in the Eyrie!”  
  
Closing the door, Ned wasn’t sure if he felt angry and disappointed at Robert’s callousness or relieved that he is going alone after all.  
  
***  
  
Approaching Penny Stokes’ cottage, he saw the tenant from afar – she sat in an easy-chair just outside the door with a sleeping babe in her arms, taking advantage of the sweet weather. She greeted him in a low voice:  
  
“M’lord must be kin to the lady who visited me yesterday? You look so much alike.”  
  
“Yes, I am her brother, Eddard of House Stark, and you must be Penny Stokes?”  
  
“Penny Stokes indeed I am, and I can even tell that you are looking for your sister, because she is lost.”  
  
“Lost???”  
  
Penny smiled an elusively malevolent, servile smile:  
“But of course, m’lord, there is a curse on your sister. You better let her alone, she has touched a cursed woman and she caught it, like a plague, there is no rescuing her. ‘Tis best now to cut her off altogether, not think about her.”  
  
If it didn’t come from a young woman, a girl, more precisely, and a new mother cradling a child in her arms, Ned would react to this as mad insolence – but looking at Penny, he inclined to take it for raving madness.  
“Penny, I don’t know what it is you are saying. Tell me, I beg you: did someone molest my sister while she was here? What cursed woman are you talking about?”  
  
“The curse is here with us, and the molestation; like circles on the water does it spread, and spares no woman alive. Not even this little one.” – She bent over the newborn and kissed its coal-black, wild hair.  
  
At this, a lightning struck through his mind, and the pieces of this horrid story all fell together in a flash. His sister ran away in indignation and disgust at what her fiancé has done. And his best friend could no longer be a friend. He could never feel the same for Robert.  
  
“Penny, I see now. I understand.”  
  
She looked up at him in disbelief.  
  
“You should know that you can rely on Lady Arryn’s kindness – she will not let you or your daughter lack for anything, and when she is gone, I will step in for her. I know where to find you. What is your daughter’s name?”  
  
“Mia.”  
  
“Beautiful name. May she grow up to be happy and strong, and free – with an eagle’s soul, seeing that she was born in such a high place. May my sister’s blessing remain with her – because I know Lyanna didn’t leave here without leaving some of her blessing at your hearth.”  
  
Penny bowed her head in recognition, and a tear glistened at the corner of her eye. Ned considered this as his leave to go, and having bowed to her silently, departed.  
  
***  
  
There was a tabby cat in Masha Heddle’s inn that definitely recognized him: each time he stopped there, she greeted him with a loud purr and scratched her arched back against his boots. He bent down to scratch her between the ears.  
  
Masha, a plump vigorous young woman, greeted him with all the affectionateness reserved for top-tier visitors. The best room of the inn, however, was occupied: a Braavosi high official of the Iron Bank was traveling to the capital. So the innkeeper ushered him to the second-best: a chamber on the second floor with the view of the garden, which right now was in the full bloom of spring.  
  
He threw his bag on the floor, pulled off his boots and sprawled on the bed. It wasn’t so much the long ride that crushed him, but the complete darkness that lay ahead: what was he to do? Where to ride tomorrow? Which way could his sister have turned?  
  
On his way out of the Vale, he visited the Royces, sending a raven to the Eyrie with his apologies to Lord Arryn on his sudden departure (he didn’t say where) which, he hoped, would be but short. Let the old man figure out what the whole thing meant – he had Robert and his mother to draw upon. Ned wouldn’t volunteer information, not in this case. From what he understood at the Royces’ (of course he couldn’t start asking direct questions, if he didn’t want the whole realm to learn of their plight too soon), Lyanna didn’t visit them. Well, unless she had explicitly and urgently asked them not to reveal that she did. But they didn’t look like they were participating in a conspiracy – they received him quite placidly.  
  
Now he could try listening around at the inn. Should he ask Masha? She knew Lyanna and all their family quite well, so chances were that she would recognize his sister had she stopped there. And she wouldn’t feel bound to tell everyone about his quest, especially if her discretion were strengthened by a golden dragon or two.  
  
Ned scrambled up from the bed, splashed for a while at the washing-basin, changed into a fresh shirt (he did make provisions for more than a day’s journey) and went down to the common room.  
  
As Masha seated him at a table apart, he asked if he could have a word with her, when she had a few minutes’ leisure. She nodded enthusiastic agreement, then placed roasted turkey and onion slices on a trencher in front of him. Making another round among the tables, she then poured wine for him from an earthen bottle into an embossed greenish glass. While eating, he listened intently to whatever bits of conversation he could catch – but people talked of the usual things – planting and sowing, weather, taxes, gossip, the king’s latest atrocities – no one mentioned a beautiful, brave noble girl traveling the roads alone, the gods know why or where to.  
  
When Masha finally had a free moment, she sat down at his table, quite close to him. She smelled of apples and a faint glow of fresh mint – a pleasant mix, elegant in its way. It took him a few seconds to gather his wits, while she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, with a wry half-smile.  
  
“Masha, I need to trust you with my secret – can I ask for your help?”  
  
“Of course, my lord, anything I can do for you.” The lingering light of the spring evening was slowly dimming outside the windows, and only a few candles were lit inside yet, so he couldn’t figure out for certain what the expression on her face signified: earnestness? Skepticism? Playfulness?  
  
“I am looking for my sister. She left yesterday morning on a small errand, on her own, and we haven’t seen her since then.”  
  
Masha shook her head in disapproval:  
“It’s not good for a young lady to travel on her own.”  
  
“Of course, Masha, you are right, no one can argue with that. Yet here we are, with lady Lyanna gone out alone and me not knowing where to look for her.”  
  
Masha made a pout indicating intense mental work, and then arched her brows:  
“Can you tell if there was a man involved in this?”  
  
That gave Ned a pause. How come he didn’t think of it himself? That is, he guessed that one man – Robert – was involved in a negative way – she was in all probability escaping the Baratheon match, which, for all she knew, her family wholeheartedly endorsed.  
  
But was there someone she might be escaping to? Did he know enough about his sister to answer this question?  
“Masha, this is a most helpful question. Thank you so much! You are truly a brilliant woman.”  
  
“How does this help you, my lord?” – she pressed close to his side, tilting her head and glancing right into his face with bold, challenging hazel eyes.  
  
“Oh, well” – he stumbled – “I’m beginning to look over my sister’s life in the past few months, trying to see if she had a love interest that I didn’t know about. She was about to be engaged, but her prospective match… he is just as puzzled as I am.”  
  
“Did he ride another way to look for her? You to the north, he to the south?”  
  
With great difficulty, Eddard checked himself against spilling out more about Lyanna, Robert and the whole darned mysterious business that he wasn’t sure himself what to make of. It wouldn’t be wise, after all, to confide in the keeper of a busy inn something he wasn’t yet ready to tell even to his own father.  
  
“We are at a loss where to turn,” – he only said.  
  
“Sir Eddard, perhaps it might be wise to turn to your own experience? If you have – no, if you _had_ a love interest – a secret one – what would you want?”  
  
He couldn’t fight back the rush of the hot, buzzing sensation in his head and all over his body that flooded him him every time when something brought to his mind lady Ashara Dayne. Clearly he was blushing like a red-hot stove, and clearly Masha saw it plainly, saw directly into his secret that was so flimsily covered – if you could call it “covered” at all. Not only did she see – she was triumphantly, intrusively enjoying it.  
  
He felt like in a duel, when the opponent is overpowering and he is losing his ground and is caught in a whirlpool of retreat and inevitable surrender. And it was delightful.  
  
She felt for his knee under the table. Definitely she sensed both his confusion and embarrassment and his delight in it, and his readiness to go along with her, wherever she took him now.  
  
She took him to his room. The dining hall she left in the charge of the bellboy and the scullion maid.  
  
***  
  
As she followed him up the stairs, without a candle, he felt an uneasy burning in his chest. What is going to come of this? Didn’t he just see the misery, madness and devastation such adventures bring about, this very morning?  
  
Masha unlocked his door with a key from her huge clinking bunch of the most diverse and curious keys.  
  
“Please come in, my most honorable guest.”  
  
He stepped over the threshold as if entering deep dark water. The water ran warm.  
  
Her hands were soft and competent, irresistible. The next familiar thing he felt was the homespun rug caressing his bare feet. The rest was unlike anything he had experienced before. He wanted to tell her so, but his tongue didn’t seem to be at his command. Masha laughed and seated him on the bed.  
  
“You better be seated, my lord, we cannot trust your legs now. What if you tumble down – you are so big and heavy, I won’t be able to drag you onto the bed, and I hate to have my pleasure on the floor.”  
  
He was now looking at her in uncomprehending alarm. She kept laughing delightedly, as if he had finally picked up on a clue that she left in plain view for him. Yet he didn’t feel like he had picked up on anything. He felt dizzy and a little nauseous – was it with fear? Masha’s plump white hands now held the earthenware bottle in front of him.  
  
“See? The wine. Don’t be scared, my sweet boy, it’s only a little harmless herb called tackweed. With just a touch of poppy. In our parts it’s normally used on girls, but it works on men just as well if not better.”  
  
He still couldn’t talk, but his eyes plainly begged for more explanation.  
  
“Oh,” she put her arms around him, pulling him up and steadying him on the bed, and tucked a pillow behind his back. He was already fully naked, she – still fully dressed, just the laces of her bodice were undone, letting loose her swelling breasts and the billows of muslin about them. “This mixture kicks in slowly. First you become all rosy in your mind and gulp up any attentions and advances that come your way. I know because I have been given it too, and then I took it a few times myself, because trust me, it makes for an incredible fuck. So once you’ve drunk the first dose, it’s the best time for hitting on you – and that’s what shameless seducers do!”  
  
She laughed with mock malice, licking her finger and teasing the tip of his cock, which was sticking up hard without the least regard for his confused emotions. She was sitting close to him on the edge of the bed, with one leg tucked under her, the green silken skirts airily outlining her delightful round thighs and knees. Noticing his glance, she took his listless hand and slipped it under her skirts, into the warm cleft between skin and skin, also silken.  
  
“Then you will get dizzy, but usually not to the point of dumbness – most people will just lose control over what they say. I like it.”  
  
He sighed with some relief – he would hate to get affected in _that_ way.  
  
“And, to be sure, you get very pliable – it becomes very hard to object to anything that’s being offered to you, especially something you want already!”  
  
Ned took a feverish breath that he couldn’t prevent or disguise.  
  
“If you want the full effect, though, you need to take a second dose. Will you, my brave lord?”  
  
He stared blankly, without giving any sign for either “yes” or “no.”  
  
“All right. You need some humoring, I see, to put more heart into you.” With these words she stood up, bowed over him and started kissing his hair, stroking his face and lips and ears, and he felt really as if he was unfreezing and she was someone close, someone he had been long waiting for.  
  
“If you say so, I’ll drink more.” He could talk again. 

  


“Ay! So much better this way.” She kissed him on the mouth with loose, soft lips that seemed to melt themselves and melt something hard in him, the last bastion of resistance and reserve.  
  
“But Masha, what if I get you pregnant.”  
  
She smiled a broad unreserved smile, and he noticed red streaks on her teeth – he knew it was from chewing sourleaf, but they looked like streaks of fresh blood, and it gave him a thrill of pleasure, for inexplicable reasons.  
  
“I like this turn of conversation, my good sir! But of course I’m taking my moon tea. I know you are thinking that these can be empty assurances. But it’s not in my interest to give birth to a bastard – even if it’s by one of the noblest men in the land” – she smiled and kissed him on the cheek – “it won’t make me fare better. I’m content with what I have, and people know me and pay me as a chaste owner of a respectable inn.”  
  
“How chaste exactly?” – he teased. He was now pretty much himself again – but no, not really – a much more lightheaded version of himself, and someone who knew what to do next.  
  
“Don’t worry,” – she parried, – “I am not someone who boasts of my conquests.”  
  
He pointed at the bottle:  
“Shall I?”  
  
“Oh yes, go ahead! I will take a little bit myself too,” – she took a long draught from the bottle and passed it to Ned.  
He drank all that remained, and she laid him back on the pillows.  
  
“What will it do to me now?” – he asked, only half joking.  
  
“The second portion will make your desire increase inordinately. You will feel very hot and may break a sweat, and your skin will feel every touch twice as sharply.” As she was saying this, she sat astride his legs and started caressing his body in long methodical strokes that ended every time just before he’d had enough of her hands’ sliding touch. “Your nipples will become sensitive like a woman’s” – she added, lying on top of him, and started circling his areoles with her tongue and sucking on the quickly hardening nipples. He groaned and hugged her with his arms and legs. She whispered in his ear:  
  
“The last one wasn’t in the books. I made it up. But look how it works on you… And you are really getting hot like an oven. Oh. You’re just – so – delightfully – susceptible to words. You are lucky. My tongue is ruthless.”  
  
***  
  
Next morning he couldn’t wake up on his own. The deep water of sleep held him and he couldn’t find it in himself to move his limbs or open his eyes, until Masha came into the room and sat on his bed.  
  
“Wake up, my precious. I have brought you something to eat. I bet you must be starving.”  
  
He realized that indeed part of his weakness was from hunger – as if he hadn’t eaten in days.  
  
For some time she just watched him eating.  
  
“I have fancied you for a long time, you know. Even from the time we both were kids,” – she confided.  
  
“You know, Masha, now that you are telling me – I think I did notice.”  
“Oh, sure you would notice – and sure you would bury it again, because you would think I must have been looking at Brandon, not you. But I liked your sobriety, and your self-effacement. And your courtesy – you were a master of it from very early on, and it wasn’t a mere formality.”  
“Oh, Masha, do you want to get me started all over again?” – he laughed.  
“And what if I do? Are you loath to think of it now?”  
“No, not at all, maybe even the contrary.”  
“Maybe!” – she teased. – “Looking at your pants there, I would say, sure enough.”  
He handed the tray with the remainders of breakfast over to her, and she put it on the side-table, then locked her fingers with his.  
“But did you have to drug me? Wouldn’t I let you have your way just because of your personal charm?”  
  
She looked at him sullenly, in mock accusation.  
“You?! No.”


	8. Rhaegar 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conflict between the King and the Prince is deepening, and Rhaegar has to take action. Ned and Lyanna take some action too, ending up in a pretty strict confinement and exposed to the displeasure of their father. A piece of cutlery turns out to have played a crucial role earlier on the timeline.

Elia’s reply was scrolling along a scrap of parchment reluctant to unroll. It seemed that she, too, was reluctant to leave the sphere of happiness into which she had disappeared when her ship melted into the blaze of midday sea. She failed to engage wholeheartedly with the subtleties and lures of the new status Rhaegar was trying to forge for her. Yet, she did not object. Elia wrote that she was happiest away from the King’s court, although she missed her husband’s fair face and witty conversation. She wished Rhaegar came for a long visit, so that baby Aegon could know his father from an early age. But she most definitely wanted to raise him away from the capital – with all the best of education that Castle Yronwood could afford. Another reason for them to stay – which Elia did not state explicitly, but it was plain enough – was that the old Lord Yronwood waxed infirm, and Ivorie, as the only unmarried daughter (she had no brothers living) was now in charge of ruling the castle and its lands. And as long as Ivorie stayed there, Elia would stay there with her – Rhaegar could read it dead certain, like a white blaze between the lines.

And, as it sometimes happened before, the power of Elia’s determination overwhelmed and stunned his heart. She set an example that it was impossible not to follow. He is going to stay with Lyanna wherever she is, from now on – or go wherever she goes.

***

But will they stay, or will they go?

The Red Keep was all in disarray, because this morning King Aerys discovered that his wife with his little son and granddaughter had left for Dragonstone – without as much as saying goodbye to him in person. Rhaegar still could not quite come back to his senses, after the scene of his father’s most abject rage and despair. Never before did his father attack him like an enemy.

“So now you don’t trust me with the children?! Who do you think I am? A lunatic? A murderer?!”

All that Rhaegar could do was to try and wait it out. He stood there silent like an executioner, and the guards stood silent, baffled. Finally he said:

“Mother decided to go. We need to talk, when you can.”

His father howled indistinct curses and rushed away, from the children’s quarter, where they met, to his own chambers. There he locked himself in and remained inside, refusing to let anyone in, even to bring him food or water.

In a small adjacent hall, the knights of the White Guard gathered in council as to how they should act: should they respect the king’s command and stay outside, or force the door to prevent the king from harming himself? Rhaegar, who was present because of the meeting’s extraordinary agenda, insisted on summoning Archmaester Pycelle.

The maester scratched his beard in grave perplexity. He had been treating the king, at his own request, for insomnia and overexcitement of the brain, alternating it with periods of opposite remedies for low spirits and slothfulness, when that was needed. But to impose help or treatment against the royal patient’s will was quite another matter. It would most likely cost them their lives.

“Archmaester, what of the prospects?” – Rhaegar asked. “Is my father likely to improve? If so, we should be patient and wait. But if not – then his illness – because we all have to agree now that this is illness rather than his natural temper – his illness threatens the entire realm, not our lives alone.”

Pycelle looked down and mumbled:

“Such decisions, your Grace, are not in the Maester’s competence.” Looking up at Rhaegar, he added: “My considered opinion is that an urgent council of the seven great Houses needs to be called.”

***

So now Rhaegar had to continue dealing with the mail. Putting away Elia’s note, after he briefly pressed it to his lips, he took a slip of parchment and inscribed it “To Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.” It was just as well to start with the toughest task. After rolling around in his mind and rejecting several versions of the key sentence, he finally wrote: “With the approval of the Faith, and at your daughter’s own will and consent, she henceforth becomes my wife and Princess of the Seven Kingdoms. Our marriage with Elia, Royal Dame Targaryen, the Princess Mother, has been terminated at her own will and consent by the High Septon.” Then came an open invitation to Princess Lyanna’s family to come to the capital and properly celebrate their newly forged kinship. Then, cursing his forgetfulness aloud, he remembered that he should also call Lord Rickard to the urgent council. He added: “Yet the times are darkening in the capital and the Seven Kingdoms, and before we can attend to celebrations, we must call your Lordship with all the heads of the seven great Houses to an emergency council at the Red Keep. Please make haste, Lord Stark, the fate of the realm depends on our sound judgment and readiness to act.”

The rest of the letters, even to Lord Tywin Lannister, were relatively easier to write. Yes, it did sound like a conspiracy. But he could not allow this conspiracy – which was sure to emerge against King Aerys very soon, unless it did already – to be led by someone else.

Rhaegar took the sealed little scrolls himself to the Archmaester, as it would be unthinkable to trust even the most faithful attendant with such a business. They dispatched the ravens together from the rookery tower into the low tattered clouds blown by angry sea wind.

He returned to his solar and dosed off on the purple-and-orange satin couch, more from moral than physical exhaustion.

***

Tender hands caressing his cheeks and hair brought him back from sleep. Lyanna was sitting next to his bed, bending over him in a cloud of unfamiliar perfume. It was like being home again, as if his strong, caring mother and his childhood happiness were restored to him. Tears scalded his eyes from the inside, as he felt the clock wheels of his life move into the next position, and this was irreversible and sad, even if the next hour on that clock was to be brilliant with happiness. He smiled to her, and she noticed his tears and kissed them off.

“Have you slept well, love?”

“Oh yes, it’s the best sleep that ends with such an awakening!” – he smiled. But at the same instant he realized something was wrong:

“How did you get in here? Did the guards let you through incognito, without asking questions?”

She laughed heartily:

“Oh no, no more incognito! My cover is blown. I don’t know how, but my brother has found me. Right where I was at Wymund’s inn. This morning. Ned, will you tell me at last what was the dark art you used? How did you discover my whereabouts?”

At her invocation of her brother, Rhaegar startled – gods be good! Lyanna’s brother was sitting by the window of his solar, just behind his shoulder – and he was completely unaware of his presence until this moment. His anger flared in an instant: how dared that damned oaf of a Stark enter uninvited, while he was sleeping?

But Stark was quick to react:

“Your Grace, I fully realize how unwelcome my intrusion is. And I beg your pardon with all my heart. If not for my sister’s insistence, I would surely refrain from coming here without your invitation. But Lyanna dragged me to the Keep barely letting me to change from the road.” – He apologetically pointed at his dusty boots. “Please forgive me for this awkwardness, I hope our reason for causing it will satisfy.”

As he spoke, Eddard was looking at him with some baffling, touching softness, something that looked like sympathy or even compassion. Such a response to Rhaegar’s unspoken anger felt to him uncomfortable, unsettling, as if his fire was being doused with plentiful water. But at this junction, when he was all alone in the world except for Lyanna, who was also looking at him with radiant tenderness, he felt strangely soothed, like a child who is tightly embraced till his tantrum is over. Yet it was still beyond him to smile or make a fitting response.

Lyanna spoke instead: “My dear, I need to tell you all that has passed since we parted yesterday. And I perceive that you have news to tell me too.”

“Let’s start with yours,” he muttered.

“You see, we couldn’t stay at the inn. Ned introduced himself at Wymund Rivers’s by his own name – and who would see any harm in that? But the old man became alarmed and whisked him away, through the door behind the counter, into some pantry – right, Ned? – and there he whispered to him through smoked sausages and garlands of onions that it’s very dangerous for any members of the great Houses to be seen around the capital. Why? Because the King fears a conspiracy and has ordered the gold cloaks and countless spies to closely follow and report any man of note who appears in King’s Landing.”

Rhaegar could not contain a groan of unsurprised surprise.

“Ser Eddard, so have you been seen by any of these, you suppose?”

“Your Grace, as my sister said, we didn’t enter incognito – nor would we be admitted. The gates of the Red Keep are now guarded by gold cloaks. We presented ourselves, and they sent for Lord Commander Hightower, our uncle, for they would not admit us on their own authority. It was he who conducted us here, but preferred not to wake you.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I understand.”

Ser Gerold Hightower was the only person in the Red Keep so far to know what Lyanna was to the prince. Rhaegar had to make security arrangements for her in case something happened to him, so the Lord Commander of the White Guard, who was also her uncle, was exactly the suitable person to confide in. He mused for a few moments before continuing:

“The gates are guarded by gold cloaks because there is a crisis… related to my father, and the royal guards are all inside the Keep. Lyanna is quite right, you should have come here, and you should also stay here, in my quarters, until things clear up. Here you both will be safest, and what is more, I may need your help.”

Now it was Rhaegar’s turn to fill them in on the situation. He felt more than slightly uneasy to be sharing the intimate and dark secrets of his household, his father’s current condition, his mother’s flight from the capital and the reasons for it, and his decision to call an urgent council of the seven high lords. Lyanna was his wife, he no longer kept secrets from her, but her brother was still a stranger. Yet there was no more room to conceal any of this – and soon the King’s condition would have to be discussed in a council that the King didn’t sanction, because the state of the realm demanded it.

Eddard turned out to be very sensitive to this uneasiness.

“Your Grace, it must be difficult for you to tell these sad news about your own family to someone you barely know, like myself. But I implore you to trust me that I will not make any use of this knowledge to harm your family or the realm.”

“Ser Eddard, I thank you with all my heart. I do trust you enough to also tell you, the first person outside the Red Keep, that we are no longer strangers but kinsmen: your sister has become my wife.”

The look on the young Stark’s face was now utterly confused and bewildered. He turned to Lyanna, and she nodded emphatically – yes, you did hear it right. Rhaegar continued, not letting him ask any questions:

“My former wife, Lady Elia, has freely agreed to relinquish our marriage, while our children with her remain heirs to the throne. She also retains all the privileges of a member of the royal House. The High Septon has sanctioned this decision of ours, and a new marriage with Lady Lyanna. The only obstacle – or rather, temporary awkwardness – is that our marriage has not been announced nor properly celebrated. In fact, that’s not even quite true: I have written of it today to your lord father.”

Eddard was no longer looking at him but shaking his head with his eyes shut in denial:

“No, no, no, no. This is not how you do these things! I can’t believe what I just heard. Father will never accept this! Believe me, this can be cause for war…”

He looked up at Lyanna with painful reproach, like he was stabbed in his heart:

“Lya, how could you do this to us??.. The Seven forgive us, Masha was right, you did run away to a man…”

“Masha? Who is Masha?”

“Oh, Lya, as if that’s what mattered now! Someone.”

He turned to Rhaegar.

“Your Grace, when did you say you sent the letter?”

“Just before I came back here and fell asleep on the couch.”

“Well, I suppose there is nothing to be done about it now,” Eddard said gloomily. “How very unfortunate we didn’t come here just a few hours earlier.”

“Why, what would it change?” Rhaegar wondered. “Well, I’m not so sure myself. But perhaps I could deliver this news. Perhaps I could soften the impact… mediate…”

Lyanna looked at him intently: “So would you intercede with Father for me?”

“Yes, sister, as I see you are ready to be interceded for. I understand that this marriage is just what you want.” – he said with mock sternness, raising his brows.

She clapped her hands and jumped with the excess of happiness, and flew to him to embrace his neck and kiss him indiscriminately. He embraced her too, then narrowed his eyes at her:

“You do act like a girl in love!” – at which she slapped him on the ear.

“We didn’t close the subject of Masha!” – she was in a position to demand now. This time he blushed profusely.

“She is… a worthy woman who is familiar with some of the secret knowledge of the Riverlands and the North. She gave me a tool that enabled me to find you.”

“So I was right, you did use some dark arts!”

“I don’t know if ‘dark arts’ is the right name for it. She said you and I have a way of finding each other because we are kin and come from the First Men. This is something she gave me.” – He produced some small, delicate object out of his inner pocket, which turned out to be a baby-size copper spoon. Both Rhaegar and Lyanna watched and listened breathlessly for more.

“Masha told me that when I came to a fork in the road, I should hold this spoon in both hands, like this” – he closed his left palm around the spoon and cupped his right hand on top of the fist – “and then slowly turn around. When I’m facing down the road leading to the relation I’m looking for, the spoon will grow warmer.”

“What if you are off the road?” – Lyanna asked, practical-minded.

“Well, she didn’t tell me. I guess you have to rely on your nose then. I never had to go off the road to get from the Crossroads Inn to Wymund’s Inn.”

Lyanna digested this for a moment and then burst out in a fit of laughter, waving her hand at him and covering her face.

“Masha!! The Crossroads Inn!!! Oh my, oh my, isn’t that neat!”

Rhaegar felt sorry for her brother, who was evidently overwhelmed with embarrassment, especially as his secret was revealed and mocked in front of a third person.

“Ser Eddard, there is no shame in keeping company with anyone you meet on the road. I, for my part, have the highest regard for Masha Heddle, her inn is a truly hospitable place.”

“Thank you for your kind words, Your Grace. I will need to go back there, to return the spoon – it’s one of Masha’s most prized possessions.”

“You expect it would be!” – Rhaegar exclaimed.

“Yes, she inherited it from her mother, and she from her mother – she comes from the First Men herself, you know. That’s how she received most of her secret lore.”

Lyanna, who managed to stop laughing before, pressed her fist to her mouth and snorted again. Eddard stared at her defiantly, as if asking “What now?”

“Looks like she used some of it on you, I would bet!”

“And what if she did?” – his voice sounded perfectly cool and self-possessed, but Rhaegar felt a depth it concealed, full of illicit joy and rapture. He could tell it by the fullness of beauty that the young man’s face gave off in a flash.

Lyanna straightened up and pronounced, mimicking her brother’s earlier solemnity: “But please trust me, ser, I will not use this knowledge to harm your family or the realm!” – and they all laughed together.

She wanted to play fair though and brought up a vulnerable point of her own:

“You know, Ned, I also have something to tell you, something to do with things out of this world. In the first place, I didn’t run away to King’s Landing – I ran from the Eyrie, because of the visit I made to a woman named Penny Stokes.”

And the brother and sister exchanged excited narratives of each one’s frightening, puzzling and fateful encounter at the cottage on the mountain slope.

***

Almost a week had passed, and they spent time in semi-voluntary captivity, entertaining each other with stories and sometimes listening to Rhaegar play and sing. For walks, the Starks could only go out into the internal court with a bit of a garden, above which Gerold Hightower himself passed in the gallery now and then, in his shining white cloak, to see if no one suspicious was lurking around.

The king recovered somewhat in the meantime, was taking meals again, though still refused to leave his quarters, and agreed to admit Rhaegar into his presence. His talk became more extreme and less coherent than before – he spoke of the high lords plotting against him, and demanded that his son summon them all to his court to be interrogated and take a renewed oath to the crown. Rhaegar said he did send summons to them all, and was expecting replies any day now from all the lords who remained loyal – which, technically speaking, was even true. It felt terrible.

The knights of the White Guard reported that he received Wisdom Rossart, head of the Alchemists’ Guild, in addition to the members of the Small Council whom he still considered loyal: his new Hand, Lord Owen Merryweather, the worthless flatterer; Lucerys Velaryon, the master of ships (what was he up to with ships, at this point?); Lord Varys the Spider.

Replies to Rhaegar’s summons started coming in, no one refused to come. The response from Lord Rickard was the last to arrive – and descended on him like an icy avalanche, which Eddard’s prior warning did little to soften. “A man once married cannot marry again, nor can a daughter marry without her father or appointed guardian handing her over to the bridegroom in a proper ceremony. House Stark will not recognize such a union as marriage. This is called taking a concubine, and it is a disgrace to the lady and her House. I shall arrive to King’s Landing in no more than a fortnight and four days, gods willing, to discuss the matter with His Grace King Aerys.”

He read this and swore: the goddamn fool has buried himself in his hole in the snow up there, and wants to know nothing. He refuses to know his daughter has a will of her own, that his chosen son-in-law is a base liar, that nothing can be discussed with the King any more. Actually, he is on his way – if he set out when he sent the raven. A fortnight and four days means he is riding light, with no carriage and with all possible speed. He will need to be saved from his doom when he gets here, he should not be allowed to come face-to-face with the King.

Of course he showed the letter to Eddard, and they discussed it together. They decided that Lyanna should not see it, at least not for now – one curse was probably enough for her to cope with.

***

The King was sitting in his solar looking out of the great bay window on the Blackwater Bay. Such a magnificent room it was, commanding the broadest view towards the sea. Rhaegar stood at the door, as his father didn’t invite him to come in or sit down. Their eyes were on the Dornish ships entering the port. Afternoon sun lit the Dornish suns emblazoned on the sails with its glow.

“Are they bringing your wife with them?”

“No, they are not, as far as I know,” – was all he could reply.

“Not-as-far-as-I-know!” – his father mocked in a croaking voice. “What do you know?”

“Dorne is coming to confirm its loyalty to the Crown and the King’s peace. May I go, your Grace?”

“Eager to go, eh? You might, just as well. I have no need for you. Will send for you when I do.”

Rhaegar bowed, taking his leave, but his father was already looking away. He followed his glance and noted two shabby vessels oaring their way to the mouth of the haven. He could not identify them, nor did he remember such ships enter the port lately. On the deck of each there was some large clumsy structure wrapped in what looked like sackcloth.

***

On his way back to his own quarters, Rhaegar was approached by Jaime Lannister, the youngest Kingsguard. Jaime signaled with his eyes that they should turn into a dark side passage, which ended with a spiral staircase. At the foot of the stairs the knight whispered to him:

“Your Grace, I have overheard something that I thought you must know. The King is ordering massive amounts of wildfire from Rossart the pyromancer. Some of it is to be lodged under the throne hall, and some he bid to be loaded on board ships. Ships that are not marked as the Crown’s.”

“I am exceeding grateful to you, Ser Jaime, and you will know the extent of my gratitude once we are through these most troubled times. You decided right to let me know, and you should also inform the Lord Commander.”

So that was the answer to the riddle of the two nondescript ships – sometimes answers just come right away. Those haystacks on the decks must be catapults. The King is preparing a murderous welcome for the high lords – although one cannot tell whether this is his primary intention or only his backup plan, a last resort. And he wants to make certain that no one escapes on the ships, if they do manage to make it out of the Keep alive.

Most of the invitees were coming by sea: Lord Arryn and Robert Baratheon were sailing from Gulltown, the Tyrells – from Oldtown, and Lord Stark and his heir Brandon took a ship from White Harbor, as the Manderlys informed at their request with another raven. Only the lords Hoster Tully and Tywin Lannister were traveling by land – and they were already here, disguised as merchants and safely lodged with their parties in two different guesthouses in the city. It was better if the King remained ignorant of their arrival for as long as possible, so Rhaegar had them waylaid and intercepted by his squire with a couple of attendants before they entered the city, and they saw reason in the stealthy course of action they were proposed. The ships were another matter though – they could hardly be hidden.

In reality, if he tried to look to the bottom of it all – he didn’t believe any of these disguises truly availed to fool his father. After all, his network of spies was superior. The Spider had means that one could barely guess at. Rhaegar just acted out of a sense that he must carry the game on: he should work at concealment and play an innocent and loyal though disgruntled son, so that his father could feel in control and well informed. What would decide the outcome of this tacit battle was something else, Rhaegar was convinced – something to do with fate, chance, and, he continued to believe, the gods’ and friends’ favor for the just cause.

But surely friends could be as capricious as gods. His best friend, for instance, Ser Arthur Dayne – he never managed to understand what made him so estranged in the last few months. Rhaegar tried to get him to drink together as they used to – but it was a no-go. Was it that Dayne took the side of his father and secretly considered him a traitor? Or was he wroth that Rhaegar became the winner at Harrenhal? Absurd as either conjecture was, they continued to plague him because there was no one to disprove them.

***

And the next morning the ship from White Harbor arrived. He proposed to Eddard and Lyanna to stay in the Keep and wait for their father and brother there, but they both said they couldn’t cower and tremble inside till Lord Rickard came and found them out. Or in any case, they did not want to give him that impression.

So they rode out together, accompanied by Rhaegar’s squire and Arthur Dayne, who was sent by Lord Commander Hightower (who wished to come himself, but the King could not spare him). The morning was brilliant and fresh, seagulls cried from the shore, as they rode through the alley of late-blooming pears that led to the royal embankment.

A cannon saluted the ship, the horses shied, were restrained, and they watched the ship mooring.

The old Stark descended with a grim look on his face, closely followed by two of his guards, Brandon Stark following behind them. The party on the shore had dismounted. Lord Rickard greeted Rhaegar with stiff old-fashioned politeness. As for his children, he barely acknowledged their presence with a curt nod of his head. Brandon bowed to Rhaegar and glared at his siblings. The rest of their retinue, about a dozen men, followed their lord to the embankment. Rhaegar squeezed Lyanna’s hand: she stood so gloomy and aggravated.

As they rode back to the Keep, he and the siblings kept behind the guests. He exchanged a meaningful glance with Eddard:

“It turns out less terrible than we thought - in the meantime. And I do sympathize.”

“Yes, quite true. Thank you, my prince.”


	9. Eddard 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned and Lyanna's father is now in the Red Keep, and doesn't want to talk to them. That makes it kind of difficult to try saving him from the Mad King's advanced plot to destroy all the high lords urgently invited to the capital. Yet Prince Rhaegar turns out to be more resourceful than the siblings could even suspect.

The king did not come out to greet Father and his party. This was just as well. In fact, when Ned saw the bald head and round figure of Lord Owen Merryweather, the Hand of the King, advancing towards them at the head of a small group of guards and attendants, he sighed with great relief. They were conducted inside the Keep, into the throne hall, and the guests were offered bread and salt. Right now there was no sense of immediate danger.

Lord Merryweather offered to host them in the Tower of the Hand, as they were only a small party, and there was plenty of room there. When he made a motion to include Ned and Lyanna among those who were to come with him, Rhaegar stepped up to the man and effectively cut them off from the Stark party, making it clear they remained his own guests.

“And how shall we get them all together for council?” – asked Lya when they were back in Prince Rhaegar’s snug music room. The prince had fitted an inner windowless closet with carpets and thick padding on the walls, so he could play and sing without being heard by chance people. So naturally they frequented this room when they wanted to talk about matters such as this.

Lamps and candles were filling the room with pleasant though a little ghostly golden sheen (after all, the time outside was approaching midday). The strain and hurt of meeting their father this morning seemed to have stayed somewhere out there, in the courtyards, on the wharf… Ned sat back and marveled at the ease and purposefulness of his sister, who looked as if she was never assaulted with their kinsmen’s accusing glances. But perhaps that was no wonder, since she was being absolved of those scathing glances by the light of Prince Rhaegar’s rapt shining eyes that were taking in her every movement.

“This is exactly the question,” the prince rejoined. They sat in silence for a while. Then Ned asked:

“Robert and Lord Arryn are due to arrive any day, are they?”

“True,” said the prince.

“I have just thought of something. When I ate breakfast at Wymund’s inn, the old Wymund placed me at the most shady table in the corner and advised me to keep my hood down over my face – so I was in the best position to look around. And I noted that the inn is frequented by smugglers: it’s not as if they wore smuggler badges, but from the way some of the customers greeted each other and kept together and exchanged bits of gibberish as smugglers do, I collected as much.”

Lya perked up her ears and urged him on with impatient nods that plainly said – so? What of that?

“I thought now: what if we engage a smuggler ship to intercept Lord Arryn? If we pay them enough, I believe they can also conduct him and the rest of us to a place that smugglers use – some place outside the city, where we can keep council away from the Spider’s nets.”

Both of his friends took this proposal to heart and their faces lit up with seeing a way out of the difficulty.

“This might very well work,” said Prince Rhaegar, “especially since I have known Wymund for a long time, he trusts me, and the smugglers trust him.”

***

This plan, once accepted, had to be acted upon immediately. But then, Ned wondered aloud, how would they arrange speaking to Wymund without anyone catching the wind of it?

The prince said, with the satisfied air of someone who has a solution up his sleeve:

“Don’t be dismayed, Ser Eddard, I am a Targaryen, born and bred in the Red Keep. There is a veritable labyrinth of secret corridors and underground tunnels. Some of them lead to quite unbelievable locations in the city and outside of it.”

Lya seemed a little taken aback.

“Will we need to go underground?”

The prince turned to her, full of concern:

“Do tunnels make you uncomfortable, love?”

She blushed and admitted that underground hollows were not a place she would choose for a pleasure walk. Ned confirmed:

“Yes, my prince, Lya has detested the vaults and tunnels at Winterfell ever since she was a child.”

“Let’s see what we can do,” said Rhaegar. “But what a lovely pet name it is, Lya. Can I call you that too, wife?” – he giggled.

Lyanna snorted haughtily:

“As it please Your Grace.” Then, after a pause, she giggled too – “No, of course I won’t mind. Just that I will feel you are like a brother to me, and that might be confusing.”

***

They packed some necessities, a supply of torches, and started on their way at once – having notified only Lord Commander Gerold, who was, as always, not far away and easy to find.

After they entered a side door in one of the underground dungeon passages, they passed a vault with nondescript forgotten tombs, at the end of which there was another door – or should it be called a hole, overhung with beard-like mops of tree roots. How could live roots have gotten down here, Ned wondered, aren’t we deep in the stone bowels of the Red Keep? As if having heard his thought in this dark, damp silence, Prince Rhaegar whispered:

“We have struck out south from under the citadel, this burrow leads to the far end of the hill slope.”

Ned felt a momentary dizziness, having to completely readjust his sense of where they were and where they were heading. His sense of direction had definitely deserted him a while ago without taking leave. He held Lyanna’s left hand, and her right hand was enclosed in the prince’s palm. She was quiet and breathed evenly, but Ned could feel the blankness of fear blotting out her mind, making it as still as the silence surrounding them. In this oppressive hush, Prince Rhaegar’s words that turned him around and set him right again on the map felt like a firm, confident touch of a warm hand.

The prince parted the dirty curtain of roots and felt for something that must have been a lock – or perhaps merely a handle.

“Do we need a key, my prince?” – Ned asked.

The other man only frowned and pressed his forefinger to his lips. Then he closed his eyes, evidently in a strenuous effort to recall something – and then let go of Lya’s hand, gave his torch to her to hold, and buried himself completely in the mess of roots – face, shoulders and all, applying both his open palms to the door in front of his chest. Then he started chanting something in the ancient tongue of Valyria. An immeasurably strange, unearthly (or rather, deeply earthly), hoarse, strangely heating tune. The damp air started growing perceptibly warmer. The prince’s song was now redoubled with groaning, rumbling and creaking of stone. It was impossible, but the door started glowing with grim dark red light, as if it was turning into lava. Ned looked at his sister from the corner of his eye – was she about to faint? But she no longer looked oppressed with fear. What her husband turned out capable of doing excited her liveliest curiosity and wonder.

They would never understand how, but the door seemed to have melted behind the roots, and then the roots themselves disappeared into darkness.

They passed through the opening, all three holding hands again. There was nothing remarkable beyond the threshold. Just a rough narrow tunnel cut in the rock. Ned was dying of curiosity – what door was that? Would it be restored to its place behind them, or did it disappear forever? What sorcery did the prince use, and who taught him that? But his lips were like a stone door themselves, none of such questions could possible pass them while he was following Prince Rhaegar through the darkness.

Very soon, Ned lost count of time. He tried counting his steps, but his mind kept drifting off, and he had to start over again. His sister seemed to be walking in a kind of reverie, he wasn’t even sure she had her eyes open. There would be little need of that, in any case – the floor of the tunnel was quite smooth, and she was conducted safely between the two of her companions.

At some point they arrived at a fork, and something in his mind, some barely present point of alertness, would question Prince Rhaegar’s total lack of any hesitation or pause before he took the left turn. But it was so sweet to watch the glow of the torch fire in the prince’s hand. Something ineffably different there was in its color and shape, like living rubies, not like the smudgy, smoky orange of tar fire.

Maybe they walked an hour, maybe a whole day and night. But eventually the prince stopped: there was another stone door, just like the first, in front of them. Only this time nothing concealed it – its vertical stone panes were in plain view. It was hard to tell if their pattern of rough stone facets was natural or the work of human hands. The prince seemed confident, putting his right hand into the barely visible depression in the stone at the level where, if another person stood in front of him, their heart would have been. The door seemed to tremble with joy and recognition, and its panes parted with relief.

Brilliant blue light assaulted their eyes like a cavalry attack.

They stepped out into a spacious white limestone cave that opened onto the sea. It was still midday – but now Ned felt a grievous uncertainty sucking at his heart, whether it was the same day or the next.

When their eyes got over the first shock of light, he asked:

“What is this wonderful place, my prince?”

Rhaegar was slow to answer.

“Something has happened to me, friend. Something that I could never imagine or think possible before I lived through it.”

Both Ned and Lyanna were now looking at him speechless. He motioned for them to sit down.

“It seems that Maegor’s spells have recognized me – although I cannot say that I quite recognize them. I did read about the dragon magic woven into the foundations of the Keep. But I never imagined anyone knew the actual spells any more. Least of all me.”

Lyanna said, uplifted with enthusiasm:

“So are you the first of the new Targaryen magicians now?”

Rhaegar chuckled doubtfully:

“I don’t feel anything of the sort. Although I cannot but admit that the old fiery earth has taken us just to where I wanted to go, bypassing the mediation of old Wymund.”

“Are we in a smugglers’ haunt?” – Ned asked, overflowing with wonder. – “But how do you – how do we know?”

The prince smiled:

“I know first of all because I feel that we have been led to where we need to arrive. But also – look there, on the wall above your head.”

Ned jumped up and peered at the cave’s chalky wall. At first he saw nothing.

“Feel it with your fingers just there, at the level of your navel,” – Rhaegar suggested. Ned looked down, felt the wall’s surface for anything unusual – and lo and behold, a relief of a nice full head of garlic was cut out in the limestone. The color and the texture were quite believable, as if the person who cut it wanted to say something beyond making a secret signal to fellow smugglers. Perhaps a joke?

“How on earth do they expect each other to notice these signs?” – he grumbled.

“Oh, I suppose, if you know what to look for, and where…” – the prince laughed.

Lyanna laughed too, got up and crouched by Ned’s side to appreciate the unnamed smuggler’s artwork – now she was finally unfreezing from her underground stupor, and looked and sounded quite herself again.

And as her proper regular self, she was more alert than both of the men together: she motioned to them to shut up and fell to listening intently to something they soon heard too: a faint splash of oars.

Voicelessly, just moving her lips, she whispered:

“They heard us.”

Rhaegar nodded, pointing at the opening of the cave and the flatness of waters with his open palm, as if to say – all noises from here spread over the water like from the mouth of a trumpet. Then he did something Ned expected least of all: walked to the mouth of the cave, took off his scarlet-and-black doublet and started waving it in the direction of the approaching boat.

***

Half an hour later they were sitting around a smokeless fire, lit in a sort of an open stove, with a pot of fish stew mounted on top of it. The stuff that burned in the stove Ned had never heard about nor seen before: Roro Uhoris, the cheerful purple-bearded Tyroshi captain, procured it from the deserted islands just off the edge of the cursed Smoking Sea of Valyria. The fuel was solid but soft, you could scratch it with your fingernail like soap, although it was lighter in weight and not at all sleek; its color was somewhat like butter gone greasy, only whiter. The smuggler captain gave Ned a piece to hold and marvel at, but promptly took it back, saying that this was his secret white coal.

The prince knew Roro from the times he worked in the King’s custom house, and Roro owed him a favor or two. (Although how Rhaegar knew that it was his acquaintance and not any odd smuggler or spy steering his ship towards the secret cave – Ned still didn’t understand, and probably never would).

The plan they hatched was simple and obvious. Roro would station his ship to the north-east of a little rocky island visible from the cave, to see from afar when Lord Arryn’s ship entered Blackwater Bay. (Their cave was situated in the cliffs of the northwestern bank of the bay, a few miles short of Rosby yet out of view of Dragonstone). Ned knew that Lord Arryn always traveled by Seagull, a swift tradesman’s galley, whose owner coordinated supplies to the Eyrie in the port of Gulltown. So chances were it would be Seagull this time as well. Luckily, it was painted blue and white, so it would be easy for the smugglers to recognize. However, it was also of necessity that the rest of the lords come for the council were notified and conveyed to assemble here in the cave. If they had time to wait till nightfall, then Roro could send one of his men to the city. Yet if they waited, they might not manage to convey everyone here by dawn – so somebody had to take a boat and row to King’s Landing, there to pass the message for the lords through the smugglers’ secret net of whispers. (Not only Varys the Spider had such a net, it turned out). Ned said impulsively:

“Of course I will go.” But Roro squinted at him and said:

“How well do they know your face in the city?” Rhaegar assented:

“Surely, Ser Eddard, a lot of people can recognize you.” Lyanna said:

“Of course it’s me who should go. I will disguise myself as a fisherwoman – who will suspect any harm from me?”

This was of course dangerous – but what other options did they have?

The Tyroshi captain made a bow with his head to Lyanna (this was all he could do in the way of a bow, sitting cross-legged on the white dust of the cave’s floor):

“Princess, you do have some sense – and some courage. That’s what I’m thinking too: you are the only one among us here who can get this done. We have some rags and fishing nets on Swallow that will suit you fine for this purpose, and you will have our emergency boat.”

This project made Ned extremely anxious for his little sister.

“But Lya, have you ever rowed a boat? Especially at sea? How will you find your way to King’s Landing, if you never traveled along these shores?” Lyanna laughed:

“Do you take me for a halfwit, brother? The good captain will explain me the way – will you, ser?” (Roro nodded emphatically). “And don’t you remember me and Benjen went rowing when we visited in Oldtown?”

“Well, there you beat me” – Ned joined in her banter uneasily.

“Don’t you worry, ser,” – Roro reassured him, - “I will also tell her exactly who to ask for, and what to say to him. She need not even enter the city – it is enough to talk to one of our people in the shoreline tenements.”

***

When the splashes of Lyanna’s paddles could no longer be heard, the prince put his hand on Ned’s shoulder.

“Do you think we are ready for the passage back into the Keep?” Ned looked at him, unsure of what he heard:

“But why would we need to go back there?”

“You see, Ser Eddard, the smugglers’ secret network, praiseworthy as it is, does not extend into the King’s residence, to the best of my knowledge.”

Ned was overwhelmed with embarrassment. He felt a hot rush of blood to his face, and looked away for a few moments.

“Forgive me, my prince. I don’t know what I was thinking of. Of course we must go back and notify my father and whoever else might have arrived in the meantime. What could be more obvious.”

Now that Lyanna was not with them, it was he, all of a sudden, who feared dark tunnels and needed to be held by the hand. Rhaegar looked into his eyes, patiently and intently, touching his arm above the elbow:

“There is no shame in not liking sorcery for an underground guide,” – he smiled. – “Especially sorcery that surprises the sorcerer himself. But I do feel the ground is talking to me still. I don’t know how long this will last, but at least I hope it can take us back to the Keep. My dear Ned – can I call you that? We are family now, after all. I would gladly leave you to wait here in peace until we all assembled. But I’m afraid I will not be able to bring your kin here, if I talk to them all on my own.”

“Yes, my prince. Of course. And you may call me as your heart is disposed to.” Rhaegar’s face beamed with great happiness, and he embraced Ned so cordially that it felt like coming home after long months of wandering abroad.

***

The passage back felt easier for Ned – both because he knew what to expect, and because his feelings towards the man he followed were so much clearer and warmer than they were just a few hours ago. Clearer – but not like anything he had known before. This was not how he felt towards his brothers – nor his friends. Not even Robert. Remembering Robert was an unwelcome intrusion, and he wanted to chase it away. No, with Robert he never felt this welcome. How could he put it into words… All the unmeasurable, stretching, pulsating time of their passage through the earth’s most secret inner places, his eyes fed off the living rubies of the prince’s torch, and his mind spun garlands of words that enchanted and transfixed him more than the fiery spells.

It was not only that Prince Rhaegar was so fascinating to contemplate, like a city built on all sides of a hill. Not only that he was full of surprises, and yet Ned was sure these surprises would never be malicious. The most binding and captivating thing about the prince was that he was interested in Ned for his own sake.

It’s not as if Ned wasn’t familiar with the feeling of being loved or cared about. His parents loved him, and his siblings (some of them, in any case!), and his friends. Yet his father, let’s say – he loved him as a son he could be proud of, most of the time. So his love shaped Ned in a certain direction. Or Lyanna: she assumed she knew him completely, and relied on him pretty much without reserve – which was wonderful and gave him a sense of having a place in the world – but it was a place in a very specific and unchanging capacity. And with Robert… No, at least his new experience now allowed him to see that he didn’t lose all that much by not being Robert’s closest friend any more. With Robert, Ned was only allowed to be his best friend because he was always ready to listen and admire, and follow, and accommodate, and console. It was in this and no other capacity that he was dear to Robert.

With Rhaegar, he was at first not sure what the man expected of him. Even at their first memorable meeting at Harrenhal – Ned now remembered – there was this feeling of intense, deeply penetrating personal interest on Rhaegar’s part, which he didn’t know then how to place and therefore shoved it out of sight, into the back of his mind. And now, during the time they had to spend closely together, Rhaegar had asked him so many questions that nothing obliged him to ask – about Ned’s past and present opinions, thoughts, feelings and dreams – that Ned was beginning to understand himself much better than before. His life was beginning to cohere into a story that made some sort of sense a whole.

Rhaegar was a friend of his mind. And if other loves and attachments were more like hunger that would be occasionally satisfied and then renewed, this one was more like coming to know an overflowing, subtle, new degree of satisfaction in one’s mind, in one’s eyes, in one’s heart. And he didn’t understand how he could live all his life not having such a friend.

***

They emerged from a side door into the familiar corridor leading out into the court where the Tower of the Hand faced the prince’s quarters with its main entrance. It was dark by now, the night just began; about eight hours altogether had passed since they had left the Keep with Lyanna. Once they stepped into the court, Ned’s uncle Gerold met them outside the door, silent, but with his face lit up with eagerness to know where they have been, how successful it was, and what next. The three of them hurried back to the music room, where Rhaegar briefed them on the disposition and further plan like a seasoned field commander.

The king is still waiting for the lords Arryn and Baratheon to arrive, and will not act on whatever plan he is hatching until then. So they need to gather everyone in a secret place they have secured, up the coast of Blackwater Bay, and arrive at an urgent decision by tomorrow’s night. Princess Lyanna is taking care of informing the lords Lannister and Tully, lodged in the city. The Lord Commander Hightower will speak to Lord Tyrell, who is staying close to the king’s quarters – both because his appearance there will arouse no suspicion, and because of his informal acquaintance with Mace Tyrell. He is to be brought to the prince’s quarters. Ser Eddard and himself will go and speak with Lord Stark.

“We must act right now – do I get it right, Your Grace?” – asked Uncle Hightower.

“Yes, Lord Commander, time is of essence.”

Uncle Hightower bowed and left.

***

In spite of the late hour, they were admitted into Ned’s father’s improvised reception room immediately. Well, on second thought Ned was surprised that it surprised him – after all, had they been at Winterfell, he would have taken it completely for granted that he can talk to his father when he needed to. But of course things were different now, and how they stood lately now came back to weigh upon his with its full oppressiveness, like the memory of a recent loss upon waking up from sleep.

Father stalked out with a heavy gait, looking bone tired, as if he had been roused when just starting to fall asleep. He looked at the two of them with pain and confusion in his eyes. After a few moments of uneasy silence he bid them good evening.

Prince Rhaegar was the first to respond, mercifully – but also appropriately, as this was right for him to do.

“Lord Stark, we beg your pardon for such an untimely intrusion. I am truly sorry to disturb your rest.”

“I trust it must be an important matter that brings you here, Your Grace,” – Ned’s father grumbled.

“Unfortunately, it is, Lord Rickard. I believe you and all of our guests in mortal danger.” And Rhaegar explained, briefly yet compellingly, why they must all urgently gather for an assembly outside the walls of the Red Keep.

“Of course, Your Grace. I will come. How many attendants can I bring with me?”

Rhaegar paused for a moment.

“You are right to ask, Lord Stark. The matters to be discussed in the assembly are of such sensitive nature that it is best to keep them completely secret. But on second thought, we may station your and other high lords’ attendants as guards outside the place. Not only that it will be acceptable, it will be also safer so.”

Father motioned assent with his head and eyes. Then he looked up at Ned, and repeated the same nod of silent assent and approval.


	10. Lyanna 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna goes on her mission to summon the lords Tully and Lannister to the urgent secret meeting. And she goes the smuggler way.

Lyanna 3

The sea was blinding her eyes with flashes of evening sunlight from every little ripple on the waves. It had been easy to row for the first hour or so – but then her hands got blistered and her back and shoulders started aching.

She was dressed in homespun rags – a coarse grey-and-brown woolen shawl, a long tattered skirt. The clothes stank of mold from lying idle in the ship’s haul, yet from under this sharp odor she could still feel someone else’s old sweat. Mercifully, Roro had allowed her to keep her undershirt. He was very concerned about the authenticity of the disguise, to the point that he smudged the tip of her nose and random places on her cheeks and chin with ashes, as if she had been spending the rough night by a fire on the beach. To cover her head and face, he gave her a discolored unraveling straw hat. At the end of his efforts, he held up for her a small dingy mirror – which was just as well, she didn’t care to look into details.

The instructions Roro gave her were quite simple and clear. She was to row southeast along the shore, keeping away from any large or military vessels when approaching King’s Landing port. She should not enter the port but head towards the tenements to the right of it, and moor opposite the biggest building, the warehouse. When her boat was on shore, she should turn it over, sit down on it and shout:  

“Mussels, octopuses and clams – pretty as the Dragon Queen’s gems!”

This she found not a little stupid – but there was no choice, because that’s how the smugglers’ man would recognize her. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to sit there and shout for too long. She did ask Roro – what if someone approached her to actually buy some of these wares? He was very reassuring: no fishmonger will want a catch announced in this way. The gems of the Dragon Queen of old – popular memory did not bother which one – figured in many a scary story and were considered an ill omen to mention.

In the meantime, the port was not yet in sight.

It took her another couple of hours to arrive. The sun was already about to dive behind the walls of the city towering above the miserable-looking agglomeration of huts and boats.

She gave the boat the last push with the oars, so it hit the sandy bank with its shallow bottom. Then she stepped into the water, dragged to boat to the shore, heaved its nose up and threw it upside-down on the sand.

After a couple of tentative repetitions of the password cry, a little girl of eleven or twelve approached her. Lyanna greeted her and asked what she wanted.

The girl said nothing, just beckoned to Lyanna to come with her. Since Roro talked about “the smugglers’ man,” she was hesitant – but after a couple of seconds of consideration she got up decisively, picked up her rag bag and strode after the girl.

***

They arrived to a squat, long building – if a building it could be called – with its outer walls draped with old fishing nets and its roof a disheveled silver-grey thatch of Blackwater reeds. Once they entered, it turned out to be a stable. About three dozen horses stood in the stalls. Lyanna noticed, as they passed, that all the horses were either chestnut or black. In the distance, at the end of the stable, it opened onto another interior, just as spacious – a covered cart yard. There, finally, the girl showed Lyanna to a grubby but comfortable seat made of reeds like a sort of a basket, and sat down herself.

“Roro sent you” – she affirmed rather than asked.

Lyanna nodded energetically. What she didn’t figure out, she realized, was whether she should introduce herself, and by what name. But the girl solved the difficulty as if she was reading her mind:

“I am not asking your name; you can call me Ismeen.”

“Very well, Ismeen. Thank you for conducting me here. Roro said you can help me pass a message to the lords Tully and Lannister who are lodging secretly in the city.”

At this Ismeen lowered her head and stared at Lyanna from under her rather matted hair:

“Who is supposed to know where they are lodging?”

“I do,” said Lyanna, “but I am only supposed to tell it to the person who will take the message.”

“Well, this would work if things were as usual. But the person who took messages was killed by the gold cloaks yesterday, and we still haven’t appointed another in his place.”

“What am I to do then?” – asked Lyanna, suddenly at a loss.

“I don’t know” – Ismeen returned.

Only after that Lyanna remembered to add,

“I am very sorry to hear.”

She got up and started walking up and down the earthen floor between the carts. The girl kept looking at her silently, until she took a deep breath, sat down again and untied her rag bag. There was some decent food in there, and Lyanna decided it’s time to give this interview a more civil character.

“Can you get us something to drink, Ismeen?” – she asked, taking out a chunk of ham wrapped in oily cloth, a hunk of bread and half a small head of goat cheese. There were also a couple of cucumbers, gnarled and knotty like the crooked fingers of some green vegetable monster.

The girl fumbled on a shelf hidden behind a curtain, just above where they sat, and produced a jug and two rather ugly rough glass cups. She poured bluish whey into the cups, sat down, and they ate for a while in silence.

 “So do you think you can help me in any way, things being as they are?” – Lyanna asked.

The girl kept munching for some long moments, then said:

“Maybe I can.”

Lyanna waited quietly to hear what comes next.

“I can take you to them lords, so you deliver your message yourself.”

In an instant it was clear to Lyanna that this was the only plan that could be viable.

“This is excellent, Ismeen,” she said. “How will you take me there?”

Ismeen gestured towards the carts, then the horses, with the air of saying, “What could be more obvious?”

“Perfect. Of course neither me, nor the lords we are going to will come short on the point of paying for your pains.”

“That’s for sure,” said the girl, “I thought I heard the name of Lannister.”

Lyanna cringed, suppressing the impulse to say who she was, to upset this exclusive praise of the Lannister generosity and trustworthiness. (But then, she thought, what should she say she was? Was she a Stark any more? Was she a Targaryen princess yet?)

“Very well,” she said. “Do you want my help with the harnessing?”

The girl snorted:

“Thanks, I can manage. But you can come with me to choose a horse.”

Ismeen led her between the stalls with nearly identical horses, until she stopped by one of them.

“Eleventh chestnut,” she declared. “My favorite. How do you like him?”

“Quite perfect,” Lyanna said. The horse was indeed not bad at all. “But may I ask, if you don’t mind…”

“Depends what,” the girl retorted.

“Why are they only two colors, and why don’t they have names?”

Ismeen regarded her with some suspicion.

“I would not rush to tell you. But it’s not only that Roro sent you, it’s also the look in your eyes. I think you will do us no harm. But beware if you do!”

“I will do you no harm,” Lyanna said solemnly.

Ismeen said:

“I don’t know where you’re from, but I guess you’ve heard of the King’s horseshoe edict. From the beginning of last winter.”

Lyanna said nothing. Actually she hadn’t. She was right to expect that Ismeen would continue whether she answered or not.

“It used to be a dragon a year for each horse, and they even returned half if the horse died in the middle of the year. So last winter he made it – four times as much for the second horse; each horseshoe of the second horse costs you as much as your first one. For the third, you pay four times the price of the second. And mind you, we pay no city taxes, nor get any protection – but the horses, those they tax anyway. They say, you pass the city gates with them every bloody day.”

“And we use horses a lot, that’s our livelihood – taking fish to town. All sorts of fish.” Here she smirked at Lyanna in a conspiratory way.  “We really couldn’t keep even four horses this way. Nor could we petition the King as a transportation establishment, because we are outside of the city anyway.”

Lyanna got the point now.

“Brilliant!” she exclaimed. “So as far as they are concerned, you only have horses – a chestnut and a black one!”

“Exactly,” she confirmed.

“That’s really clever,” Lyanna admired. “But what was the point? I mean, the point of the edict?”

“Well, they say the winter was expected to be long; the King wanted to secure enough forage for the animals that remained in town. Also, the crown offered to buy horses that were young and strong enough for the army. A ridiculous pay, but better than nothing. I heard they took those herds to the northern parts of Dorne, under the mountains, to graze there throughout the winter.”

“But not all the horses were fit to be sold this way,” Lyanna affirmed.

“Yes. A lot of horse flesh on the market,” Ismeen raised her brows. “I don’t really remember, it was seven years ago. My mother told me.”

While they were talking, the girl had harnessed the horse to the meanest-looking cart. With a finely jocular gesture of the head, she invited Lyanna to mount into a conveyance best suited for her habit. Lyanna gave her a mock fierce grin in return, looked around, picked up her bag and hopped into the cart.

***

 They entered the city gates very uneventfully – the guard said “hello” in what sounded like a habitual manner, the girl returned a greeting, the horse’s hooves and the cart’s wheels echoed as they passed the arc. When they emerged, a rain started drizzling.

“Where now?” Ismeen asked.

“I bet you know Wymund’s Inn.”

“Sure.”

On saying the name of Wymund’s Inn, Lyanna was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of nostalgia. A great, warm, and somewhat sad and anxious tide. As if the rags had fallen off from her and no longer protected her from who she was – a woman sick with longing for her beloved. She had forgotten this feeling lately, because they had been inseparable for quite enough time, sufficient to heal and satiate the sharpness of the former longing – but nothing could change the disposition where she would always want more of him.

She was only confident now – which she couldn’t be until they came to be together – that he would not hurt her on purpose. Or capriciously cast her off, because she was too secure a game for him. That was not in his nature, she now knew.

They entered through a different gate than the one Rhaegar led her through on that unforgettable evening that blazed with red. The streets were bustling with people, dogs, children, other carts. It was getting dark, a lamp-lighter passed from post to post with a lighting pole. “Tar lamps,” she thought, “wonder how often they need to climb the posts to refill them.”

Suddenly something hit her back above the shoulder-blade, a fairly hard, unfriendly hit. She swayed around instantly: a dark-faced urchin was just taking another rotten apple out of a basket. But he put it back down at once, as soon as he saw the way she moved.

“Seven hells,” she swore under her breath. Before she finished saying this, she realized that it didn’t matter the boy took her for a defenseless old hag she was not – what mattered was that he realized she wasn’t the defenseless old hag she was trying to pass for. Now it remained to hope that he was not connected to the Spider’s networks. And also – that the Eleventh Chestnut was brisk enough to take them to their destination before any disturbance in the net got to its center. 

***

Wymund’s inn was a pleasure to see again. Its front wall was plastered and whitewashed, after the manner of the Reach; time, city dirt and foul weather made it grim and grimy; its bulges and cracks looked like blemishes and wrinkles on old tanned skin. The dark, rather unkempt tile roof overhung the little high-placed windows like a shockhead of hair. Mild golden sheen from the windows and the broken circle of light thrown by the lantern above the door were a consolation to the heart in the thickening twilight.

Ismeen drove into a side nook of a dead-end backstreet and tied the horse to a non-obvious hook placed low in the wall. Lyanna patted Eleventh Chestnut’s neck and gave it a withered carrot from her bag.

The moment they walked in, the master was upon them – pointing them with his eyes to a passage towards a side door, coming after them immediately, lighting a candle inside what turned out to be a large, curiously shaped pantry. “Ned had been here too, he told us that Wymund talked to him here, among hams and onions,” she remembered.

Lyanna took off her hat.

“Could you kindly bid to bring some water, ser, for me to wash my face?”

Wymund’s face was incredulous, then he laughed with recognition.

“Lady Lyanna! This has been a true smugglers’ disguise.”

“Indeed it was, ser. Tyroshi work,” – she returned, smiling.

Ismeen was leaning against the wall, speechless. After a while she whistled through her teeth:

“Whew. That’s what it is. Well done, m’lady”

“I suppose I know who I need to take you to,” – said Wymund. Lyanna nodded silently in assent.

“Ismeen, would you like to have a proper supper in the meantime?” she asked.

“Sure, m’lady, what else is there left for me to do?” – the girl peeped naughtily.

Lyanna frowned at her in jest, and Wymund showed Ismeen out into the dining parlor.

***

 When he came back, he knelt heavily down. Raking out dry dirt and onion husks from a depression in the floor, he felt for something underneath, then grabbed it and pulled up a square cellar-lid, with great effort and much groaning and dust.

Yet after this he climbed down a ladder with quite an alacrity, holding the candle in its chandelier steadily in one hand, and beckoned to Lyanna from down below to climb down too, gesturing for her to replace the lid once her head was low enough.

The passage was short and less than frightening, as she saw homely rows of pickle jars and fruit preserves on musty shelves, in the faint gleam of the candle. Smells of root vegetables biding their time in cool underground darkness reminded her of home.

Sensing the pleased and entertained look on her face, Wymund, in a highly unexpected bout of sincere talkativeness, explained that the cellar had double entrances. The main one, open to all eyes, was at the end of the dining hall, so everyone could see waiters descending to fetch a bottle of wine and kitchen boys coming up the stairs with baskets of supplies. But as for the other openings, no one should know about them.

“I promise you no one will hear about them from me, ser,” – she assured.

“I know no one will, my lady. You are a safe person, I can tell.”

This pleased her tremendously. But then also gave her a pause: was it about herself? Or perhaps about the extent of Rhaegar’s implication in the smugglers’ world?

With these thoughts she climbed up after Wymund into the yet unknown place of destination.

***

They emerged into a room full of light – brilliant chandeliers, torches on the walls, bright flashes reflected off gold brocade and rich tableware. For a few moments Lyanna was effectively blinded and could not immediately recognize the splendid young woman who looked at her, evidently not recognizing her either.


	11. Catelyn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "И мы плывём, пылающею бездной  
> Со всех сторон окружены."

Catelyn

There was a knock on the trapdoor in the floor. Lord Tywin lowered himself on one knee and lifted the lid, made of the same planks as the floor, with some difficulty. First there emerged the panting, ruddy innkeeper, and after him – a shockingly tattered and befouled scarecrow of a person. Judging by her look and smell, she was a fishwife, and Catelyn was mighty puzzled why such a person might be brought here, especially by such an unusual entrance.

The fishwife climbed out and straightened herself with quite an agility, gracefully removed the disheveled straw basket that served her for a hat, and inclined her head in deferential greeting to the lords Tully and Lannister. Her features were vaguely familiar.

“Lady Lyanna Stark,” – the innkeeper made a somewhat belated introduction.

This was followed by a few moments of general bewilderment. Catelyn took a deep breath, readjusting herself back to where she was – yes, this was still a room properly belonging to House Tully, even though it was a tavern parlor that her father rented as a guest (a guest in hiding, yes, and she – his daughter, who had hardly any business being here but came with him nevertheless).

Catelyn’s father was the first to come up to the visitor, and lifted her hand to his lips.

“My lady, it seems that you have come on a grave and urgent occasion?”

“Yes, Lord Hoster, I am come to deliver a message from…” – here the young noblewoman stammered a moment – “his Grace Prince Rhaegar.”

The sound of her voice suddenly evoked a shard of memory in Catelyn’s mind – a jarring memory, yet unclear, the sting of it was missing... Lyanna came to Riverrun only once, at the beginning of last winter, with her father and mother – and Brandon, her dashing, radiant elder brother. Lyanna was about fourteen years old then, and Catelyn was thirteen…

But she was prevented from diving into the depth of her memory any further – it was her turn to observe the proper form of welcome towards the visitor.

As she approached the other girl, her face lit up almost unintentionally with the response to Lyanna’s hearty smile and the warm twinkle of nostalgic recognition in her eyes. Evidently, seeing Catelyn felt to her a little bit like coming home. And Catelyn was not one to disappoint any person who looked at her like that.

She embraced Lyanna and kissed her on both grime-bespeckled cheeks. With mild gravity she said:

“My lady, we have only very limited means to welcome you here. But please, be so kind as to accept what poor comfort and refreshment I can provide. May I order to draw a bath for you and offer you to choose any of my garments that may suit you?”

Here Lyanna made the same gesture as when she was introduced – which now, after the first shock had dissipated, Catelyn found impulsive and not quite proper: she bowed her head in recognition of the favor, like a man. Then she took both Catelyn’s hands in hers and brought them up to her lips.

After that, Lyanna proceeded to deliver her message: they all were to come to a certain meeting place by daybreak, and the passage to that place lay by sea. The lords pressed Lyanna to sup with them first, but she declined. Yet Catelyn prevailed on her to swallow some white Arbor wine with fine toast and gooseberry preserves, before taking her guest to her own private chamber, where she would make her presentable.

***

There were no female servants in Wymund’s establishment, so it was only proper for Catelyn to assist at her guest’s bathing and dressing up. Lyanna bathed with relish. She complained aloud about the horrible, horrendous, despicable clothes that she had to wear in order to accomplish her mission.

“But the smell! That was the worst part of it. Oh well, the feel of those sackcloth sleeves on the skin – that was _something,_ too!”

There was no mirror in the room. (Catelyn herself had to go downstairs every morning – when no one but the servants was awake yet – to arrange her hair and generally make sure she had her toilet in order, in front of the gorgeous crystal mirror in the parlor. Obviously, she thought, men had been the only guests in this tavern for years and years). She said to Lyanna:

“Unfortunately, I have no mirror in my chamber. I am afraid you will need to rely on me for your appearance tonight.”

Lyanna laughed:

“Gladly, sister! Compared to relying for my appearance on an orange-bearded Tyroshi smuggler – this is like being attended to by the Queen’s own maids… surrounded by the best polished silver mirrors…”

As she spoke, she visibly realized that she had said too much – or said something wrong.

Catelyn tried to dispel the awkwardness:

“It is so very sweet of you to call me sister! Of course the wedding day has not been announced – but we all know how the things stand, what with the King’s condition, and what with… Still, Father promised he will set the date and make all the arrangements with your lord Father as soon as we come back to Riverrun.”

“Oh, yes!” – Lyanna exclaimed. – “I look upon it as a sure thing.”

For a while she scoured herself with a sponge in silence, with grim determination.

“But tell me,” – she broke out in a while, - “does your father think it safe to leave you behind, here at Wymund’s, when we leave?”

Catelyn pondered a moment:

“I haven’t thought of this – nor could I ask my father yet – but why do you assume that I’m staying here?”

“Why indeed?” – Lyanna beamed, and visibly calmed down and became more comfortable. “You see,” – she continued, - “I was truly fluttered that I mentioned smugglers to a person who was not in the know – that is, to you. Do you know the saying ‘Wine in, secret out’? I suppose you do… But if you are coming with Lord Hoster – that’s another matter altogether. I’m so glad you are coming with us, and now you how many reasons I have to be glad…”

At this she started twisting the remaining drops of water out of her heavy dark hair, then lifted her blazingly white body out of the water. Her skin looked semi-transparent, letting through the ruddy glow of the blood invigorated by the lusty sponging she gave herself after her dirty and dusty ordeal.

Catelyn was a healthy girl herself – in fact, she shouldn’t think of herself as a girl any more, she recollected – she was a woman grown, engaged to be married any day to this magnificent woman’s brother. As she thought of this, the thought became almost something tangible, a hot, bulky, heavily tumbling presence in her heart that suddenly changed the way she saw Lyanna. So much so that Catelyn had to sit down, having hastily and somewhat unceremoniously handed over to Lyanna the large diaper cloth towel that she was holding out for her. A few moments ago, Lyanna was just a somewhat uncouth, lumbering, vaguely threatening unwomanly person in her eyes. But as soon as it came home to Catelyn that this was a trueborn sister of her own radiant, magnificent Brandon – it was as if his grace and attraction were suddenly extended to her. But she never saw her dear Brandon naked yet! The broad shoulders, the muscular arms, the proud bearing of the head, the heavy, precise and unwavering certainty of speech and action, which they both wielded like a two-handed sword. Yes, all of this was quite enough, even as a recollection, to make her legs give out and to force her down on the polished wooden traveling chest that stood by the door.

Lyanna wrapped herself in the towel in one sweeping movement and stepped towards Catelyn, inquiring solicitously:

“But are you well, sister?”

Catelyn looked up at her:

“But of course I am. Please do not fret over me – we have no time to lose. We need to find you some clothes that will suit you.”

She got up from the polished chest and propped up its heavy lid against the wall.

A heap of many-colored clothes, a joy for the eyes. Look at this, not at the naked garment of breathing skin. It can be all done properly. There is no need to mix wine and milk, you will spoil both. Brandon is Brandon, and his sister is her sister too. Or will be very soon. This is the good way for it to be. Catelyn does everything in the good and right and proper way, never otherwise. Here is a gown that she wore the day of the tournament when Prince Rhaegar brought Lyanna the crown of blue roses. No need to dwell on this memory, but it seems the right choice for now. The question is, just how is Lyanna going to fit into it? Never mind that the other girl is taller, that’s the smallest trouble. Catelyn’s breasts are fuller, but Lyanna’s chest is way broader across. The other girl (no, it’s “woman”) is also wider at the waist. I bet she never wore stays, Catelyn surmises. Lyanna is standing patiently by, wrapped from shoulder to toe in the large towel, not complaining of the cold that has started to get into the room.

Catelyn fishes out a white foamy petticoat from under the heavier clothes.

“Please put this on, dear sister, and then we will see if this green gown can suit you for now.”

“Thank you, dear Cat,” – Lyanna responds. It’s such a warm feeling. Catelyn wishes Brandon always called her that. Their voices ring so alike, she has only noticed it now.

Lyanna makes a characteristically rough and clumsy try at the dress. Pulling it over her head, she gets stuck in it and tries to take it off again but can’t. For some moments, her movements betray panic. Catelyn makes a move to help her, but Lyanna manages to tear the gown off, back again over her head. Her face is red, frightened and angry, and she is panting, struggling hard to calm her breath.

“Oh, Cat!” – she gasps finally. – “This dress of yours has almost strangled me!”

Catelyn steps over to her, gently embraces her back and arms.

“How could a dress strangle you, my dear?”

“Oh, I couldn’t breathe in! It didn’t let my ribs move!”

Lyanna takes a few seconds to collect herself, then says:

“Do you have scissors here?”

Catelyn is puzzled, but walks over to her night table, opens the delicate silver filigree box where she keeps all sorts of odd little accoutrements, and fumbles for the sharp-ended scissors with gilt insides of rings. When she hands them over to Lyanna, she is shocked at what her guest does: not saying a word, not even thinking of asking permission, she sits down on the bed and starts ripping out the surface seams of the dark green satin bodice.

***

In half an hour they were ready to go. Catelyn quickly added extra strengthening stitches that were to hold Lyanna’s bodice together at least until she could change into something else. To make it look proper, she gave her a dark grey cape nicely set off at the edge with a curious border embroidered in black. For herself she took a warm woolen mantle (Lyanna insisted on choosing the darkest one, as they were to travel secretly by night) and packed some necessities in case unexpected things befall them. A beef-bone comb for her hair; a piece of soap; clean underwear; a pomander of sweet riverland herbs that she didn’t wear on her person but held close by at all times.

The lords in the chamber below were all set to travel, too. They both wore suits of fine chainmail and emblazoned capes, and looked very formal and majestic. Lord Tywin’s cape was golden, but not in the garish way in which such capes looked on goldcloaks. It was patterned with plain-woven lions and lilies against the shiny satin-weave background. Catelyn’s father wore his favorite light-grey cape that she had embroidered for him with a lifelike trout leaping out of blue waters.

A servant boy stood ready to carry two sizeable baskets of provisions. Lyanna looked at them with visible satisfaction.

Catelyn came up to her father and whispered a question in his ear: did they read the road prayer yet? Lord Hoster smiled at her with benign fatherly condescension and raised his voice to all the company present:

“Friends, let us pray to the Father, the Mother and the Stranger to grant us safe passage and return and propitious fulfillment of our purpose.”

Everybody joined in pious murmur. After that, they left through the back door. As they stepped out into the dirty alley behind Wymund’s Inn, Lyanna darted into the darkness and came back immediately with a scrawny, ragged girl of about ten or eleven.

“My lords,” – she announced in loud whisper, - “this is our guide. Keep close to her at all times, and keep silent, if it please you.”

Apparently there was no question of using a wheeled conveyance. Lyanna bent to whisper into her ear:

“We can’t use the cart I came by, it will be way too much noise. Must go on foot. I can carry your bag, if you like.”

Catelyn politely declined and assured Lyanna that she is quite an apt walker, and that there is no need to worry for her.

The servant boy looked about him, and as there was no carriage trunk to put them in, put the baskets of food down on the pavement, made a hasty bow and disappeared back into the tavern. Lyanna picked up one basket, Catelyn’s father another, and they started their stealthy passage through the cooling dark narrow streets and alleys of King’s Landing.

The dirt and stench of the place made Catelyn more than a little sick. She came here by carriage, and clearly the driver used wider and more decent streets than those through which they were escaping now. The city did not sleep at this hour past midnight. There were occasional lights through windows and doors, shrill infant cries here and there, drunks staggering along or lying by – once she almost stumbled over one.

At long last, their young guide led them into some crack between two seedy houses, into a nondescript roofed passage that soon became a vault and then a tunnel. Somehow the tunnel felt a huge deal cleaner, safer and even airier than the streets. It was relatively short and opened onto the shore and the starlit sea.

***

They were being expected.

Two shades separated from the deeper shade under the steep clay shore and strode towards them. The girl who brought them here showed no signs of alarm – just the opposite, her posture became relaxed, as if her mission was over. Not greeting the two men, she merely introduced the company to them. They said nothing apart from silently nodding their heads, and then motioning to the four nobles to follow them.

Lyanna stepped towards the dirty little girl and pressed both her hands, then embraced her (so that the girl’s feet were lifted off the ground for a moment). Silently, the girl disappeared into the shades, turning back to wave to Lyanna just before she was gone. They were already on the brink of the surf-moistened sand, but no boat or anything of the sort was in site. The two men started walking to the left, along the surf, making no additional sign, explaining nothing.

Lyanna grumbled aloud:

“More walking!”

She put down her heavy basket, straightened her back and rubbed her chafed, tired hands against each other.

Catelyn offered:

“Can we carry it together? I will hold at one side of the handle.”

To her surprise, Lyanna readily agreed, without making a show of reluctance.

So they walked for quite a while. Soon they entered under the crumbling cliffs of clay and had to tread in shallow water. After skirting a round promontory, they came in sight of a cozy little bay, where a small, immensely attractive vessel stood anchored just a few yards from the shore. Catelyn had no notion before that a floating conveyance – be it a boat, a ship or a raft – could be attractive and desirable to the point of giving her a sweet pang of longing. But this one… It was so delightfully rounded, so well-painted in reddish nutshell brown and faintly gleaming gold; its half-furled sails – tidy and pretty, like on a toy ship; its round portholes above the water – mildly, dimly lit with the coziest golden light in the world. It was hard to tell if it was a very little ship or a magically enlarged boat. A very young maiden ship, Catelyn thought…

It was quite an ordeal to get themselves to the narrow ledge in the cliff onto which the gangplank was thrown for them. But finally they were all aboard, Catelyn, Lyanna, the two high lords, the two nameless men and the two heavy baskets.

Immediately, as Catelyn stepped onto the deck, she felt the gentle rocking of the ship, and an aura of a miracle descended on her. There were stars above, and stars below, reflected deep in the calm surface of the sea, and nothing prevented her from floating and departing anywhere, where no direction nor time was needed. She stole behind the cabin and stood leaning on the stern, where no other eyes espied her. No one seemed to miss her while the four seamen (were these the smugglers Lyanna talked of?), including the two men who brought them here, pulled the gangplank in, prepared the shipboat for departure and started it on its way.

The quiet with which the ship left the harbor was remarkable.

Catelyn only noticed it after a while, thinking idly: but did they manage the sails? No, the sails seemed as idle as herself, no one touched them, nor was there any wind. So how were they moving then? No oar splashes were heard either. She let the thought drop, her gaze blissfully dissolving in the two starry deeps surrounding her like sheets and canopies of a glorious, majestic bed in which her soul could take all the blissful sleep it ever wanted.

She didn’t know how much time passed ere she heard the quiet footsteps and agitated whisper of Lyanna.

“Sister, here you are! I wondered where you were hiding. Seems like you are enjoying the night!”

“Yes, I am,” – Catelyn replied dreamily.

This response restrained Lyanna from whatever she wanted to say, and for a while they leaned side by side against the board (it had a beautiful border of smoothly polished, shallow carving on the inside, which it was a pleasure to explore and rub with the tips of the fingers).

At length Lyanna said:

“Do you think you can imagine how this ship is set in motion?”

Catelyn smiled:

“I tried to – but I failed.”

“Would you come with me? I can show you.”

Catelyn laughed a light laugh and went after Lyanna into the cabin, then they climbed down the ladder into the hold.

 What they saw was a curious sight. Instead of benches for oarsmen there were a sort of low chairs – four in number, placed in line along the middle of the hold, one after the other. Two of them were now occupied by seamen who seemed to be half-reposing; only their legs moved. Each one spinned a wheel that had two freely revolving footholds on opposite sides of the disk. Each wheel was lodged in or embraced, along its upper edge, by a thick leather belt that descended into the holes opening in the deck.

Catelyn marveled at the sight. Lyanna seemed to take acute pleasure in her wonder, as if it was the Stark maiden herself who had designed and built the whole thing.

“What are these belts doing?” – asked Catelyn.

“They spin big screws, you know,” – Lyanna made an enthusiastic spiral movement with her hand – “down below the hull. They make no splashes. Mighty fit for a smuggler ship!” – she could barely contain her rapture.

Catelyn giggled out of sheer sympathy and elevation of spirit.

***

She found them a little plush-upholstered nook in the cabin, behind a bead curtain (in fact the beads were little polished seashells). Through the clean porthole there shone some of the familiar stars. Catelyn brought from the galley on a tray a burning candle, some grapes, a small selection of fine meets, pastries and cheeses, a bottle of golden Arbor (since they had started the evening with it) and two glasses.

Lyanna was delighted with everything. So high were her spirits that Catelyn thought she might get to know something from her – something it was not usually possible to ask. So she determined not to refill her own glass.

“Can you tell me about your brother?” – she ventured, after they went through the better part of the cheese plate and moved on to the pastries.

“Oh, sure,” – Lyanna mumbled, hastening to swallow the last morsel. Then she said more distinctly – “Ned is absolutely a marvel. He is the best brother in the world. If he didn’t exist, I couldn’t have invented one like him.”

Catelyn was embarrassed (although what was there to be embarrassed about? She wasn’t sure. It was just that she felt as if she had made a mistake – although apparently she had made none.)

“And what about the other one? I mean, Brandon, your eldest? Really, I would love to hear about all of your brothers – but I should have made myself more articulate!”

Lyanna laughed heartily.

“Forgive my foolishness, sister! It was for me to know which brother you were asking about!”

She mused for a little while, taking tiny sips from her glass.

“You see, Cat, I agree that you have made a wonderful match. Bran is, you could say, the cream of the earth. He is everything you could wish a young nobleman and heir of a great house to be.”

“This is very encouraging to hear,” – Catelyn said with some trepidation. – “But it sounds as if there is a ‘but’ to your words. Do I sense it right?”

“I will not pretend you are wrong, sister…” – Lyanna sighed.

“So can you tell me what is the shady side? What should I guard against?”

“Oh,” – Lyanna sighed again. – “I don’t know if it’s shady or just over bright…”

“What do you mean, sister?”

“Well, you see… He shines so bright out of himself that he can hardly see anyone else. That is, he will see you, to be sure, but not in any detail. You need to be either above him, for him to really pay attention – or, you know… or to be his enemy. Although it would be weird advice to a bride to become her future husband’s enemy so as to be properly seen…”

Catelyn sighed a deep bemused sigh.

“And do you think he sees beauty? Or things like refinement, manners, elegance?”

Lyanna looked up at her sharply:

“These are very good questions indeed.”

Then, after a pause:

“I think he values these highly. He surely values all these qualities in you. But, to be completely frank with you – and I think I owe this to you, I’m not saying this to upset you for nothing – to be completely frank, when I say ‘values’, I mean it as in ‘is glad to put them away in his treasure chest.’ And ‘credits them to his account’. I don’t know if these qualities will make him see you more accurately or look at you with more attention and care.”

“What makes you say these things to me?” – Catelyn couldn’t help asking. – “He is your brother. You have known him all your life. Me you have seen only once, and it’s been years since.”

“Oh, Cat… How shall I explain… Perhaps you are right and I wouldn’t say anything of the sort even a year ago. But I have seen things that changed me…”

Catelyn said nothing, just looked at her patiently and intently. She then took the bottle in her hand and made an inquiring gesture at Lyanna’s glass: should I pour you some more?

Lyanna made a grimace with squinted eyes, nodding slightly in silent agreement that these were painful matters to discuss and it would take more spirits to make them speakable.

Then she started upon the story of her engagement to Lord Robert Baratheon, and how she was sent by Lady Arryn on a charity errand to the mountain village.

Catelyn had heard of this engagement, yet knew no details whatsoever. She was quite certain that no wedding date was set yet. But when Lyanna finished telling the story of Penny Stokes, Catelyn was filled with doubt, almost with dread.

“But wait, dear sister! Did the girl accuse Lord Robert of having molested her and abandoned her with child?”

“Yes, Cat, she plainly did. And I believed her too. So did my brother. I mean, Ned. He saw her a day after I did, when he set out from the Eyrie looking for me.”

“Looking for you????” – Catelyn’s eyes jumped out of their orbs with surprise.

“Oh well,” – Lyanna sighed. – “Wine in, secret out. What did I say? Tonight is the night of tearing off covers. And clothes…” – she giggled inconsequently.

Then she continued:

“I truly am glad that you haven’t heard of any of this yet. It means we have been able to keep things to ourselves, at least some of the things. Not everything becomes the prey of rumor straight after it happens. Sometimes precautions and reserve do work. But they are a heavy burden.”

“What do you mean, my dear?” – Catelyn was all ears.

“There’s a lot; they’re huge and heavy things that I mean.”

Catelyn extended her hand to take Lyanna’s hand in hers. She saw tears glistening in the other girl’s eyes.

“My engagement to Robert Baratheon is broken. I love Prince Rhaegar. I came to him here, to meet him in King’s Landing. We were married by the High Septon in a private ceremony, pending public validation.”

Catelyn looked at her motionlessly, suppressing the next question – was not the prince married to the mother of his two children?

Lyanna understood the question – what could have been more obvious:

“Princess Elia is no longer Rhaegar’s wife. Their marriage was annulled at their mutual will and consent.  The children remain heirs to the throne.”

Catelyn heaved a deep, excited sigh.

“What an amazing, beautiful arrangement.”

“Yes? Do you really think so, sister?”

“Of course it is. It is just. It is fair. It seems to hurt no one.”

Lyanna broke into loud sobs and fell on Catelyn’s neck, and couldn’t stop crying and clutching at her till she made her shoulder wet all through.

When she was able to sit up straight again, Catelyn gave her a clean handkerchief (of course Lyanna couldn’t be expected to have anything of the sort at hand). The other girl wiped her face and blew her nose, and took another sip or two of wine to steady herself.

“You see, sister, there has not been public validation so far. And I don’t know if there ever will be. My father disapproves of the whole thing completely. He will not accept the way we have done it. I don’t know if he still recognizes me as his daughter. He hasn’t spoken to me ever since he came to King’s Landing – ever since we said goodbye and I left for the Eyrie, as a matter of fact. When I mention Prince Rhaegar to anyone, I don’t know what to call him except His Grace. I don’t know what to call myself! Am I a Stark any more? Am I a Targaryen yet, or will I ever be? Am I a lady, a princess, a whore? I have lost all but my given name, and even that is on the brink of infamy.”

Now it was Catelyn’s turn to cry. Tears of sympathy veritably burned her eyes. Lyanna embraced her shoulders and brought her own glass to Catelyn’s lips, since Catelyn had finished hers a good while ago.

 

 


End file.
